Third dose of Covid-19 vaccine to health frontliners, elderly by this month, says Khairy

KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 4): The Ministry of Health (MoH) is expected to start administering the third dose of Covid-19 vaccine to selected groups such as frontliners, the immunocompromised and elderly with comorbidities beginning this month, according to Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

In a written Parliamentary response to a question from Beaufort member of Parliament Datuk Hajah Azizah Mohd Dun, Khairy shared that as of Oct 2, 87.2% of adult population in Malaysia has been fully vaccinated while 94.3% of adult population has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. 

Meanwhile, he also highlighted that MoH has already outlined a few measures in addressing the emergence of new Covid-19 variants in the country, one of them includes control at the international entrance.

“To prevent the entry of new variants from abroad, the following measures are currently implemented such as improved travellers’ entrance at the international entrance gate by conducting risk assessments on travellers from countries at risk.

Follow our Covid-19 vaccination tracker to see where we are in the race to herd immunity.  

“Another measure is mandatory 14-day quarantine from the date entry into Malaysia. The 14-day quarantine period will be continued for another seven days if there is a need based on the result of the risk assessment carried out by the traveller on the 14th day of quarantine.

“Also, we will only allow travellers who are tested negative with an RT-PCR laboratory test report performed three days before the departure date,” Khairy elaborated. 

The health minister also revealed that no Mu and Lambda variants were detected from the samples in Malaysia.

He said based on the sequencing analysis results, 1,312 samples showed that a total of 1,246 (i.e. 94.9%) were identified as Delta variant while 11 samples were identified as Beta and the other 55 were not variants of concern.

The selected samples were from all states including Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan.

On Sunday (Oct 3), Malaysia recorded a further drop in new Covid-19 daily cases, down below the 10,000 figure mark to 9,066 — the first in nearly three months.

It is also the lowest number of daily cases reported since July 12, 2021, which saw 8,574 cases.

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