KUCHING: The Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) is now making preparations, including setting up mass vaccination centres, to vaccinate more Sarawakians in the coming phases.
State Health Department director Dr Chin Zin Hing said the next phase involved vaccinating eligible high-risk groups and rural population, and this required proper planning while taking into account logistic issues.
“We have started the first phase smoothly, but our biggest issue is logistics as you know, Sarawak is very big — we have 12 divisions and 40 districts, plus a lot of our population is in the rural areas.
“Phases two and three will be a challenge for us. Each division has its Divisional Disaster Management Committee (DDMC), and they are in charge of coordinating preparations at division level,” he said on Astro Awani’s ‘Sarawak — Ahead in The Immunisation Race’ on Monday.
With Sarawak targeting to complete all three phases by August, ahead of the nation’s target of February next year, Dr Chin said the decision to push it forward is so that the state could plan, and in case of any eventualities, there would already be a contingency plan.
To ensure that the vaccine was stored at -70°C, particularly when transporting to rural areas, he said the state had set up seven storage centres and from there, the vaccine would be distributed to the respective vaccination centres.
“We will set up the vaccination centre in health facilities and we are also going to set up mass vaccination centres during phases two and three,” he said.
During the two phases, both healthcare workers from public and private facilities would be administering the vaccine, while non-medical people would also be called in to help in registration, crowd control, documentation and others, he added.
“We also get assistance from other agencies in the first phase, and for two and three, we are confident that with such cooperation, we should be able to conduct these phases smoothly,” he said.
On whether or not the state is looking at the possibility of using the AstraZeneca vaccine for the rural population given logistic requirements, Dr Chin said discussions are ongoing.
“We have discussed that if there is any availability of a single dose vaccine, then that will be something good. Otherwise, we need to make two trips to give two shots of the vaccine.
“If we can cover one trip one go. That will help us overcome the logistic challenges,” he said.
In the meantime, noting that those living in the rural areas could have limited access to vaccine registration via the MySejahtera app, Dr Chin said SDMC had engaged the respective district offices and community leaders to help with manual registration.
“So far, response is encouraging, and we will continue to do this so that eligible residents are registered. Once this is done, we will work out the vaccination schedule, and how to get the people to the vaccination centre,” he said.
He added that quite a number of vaccination centres had already been set up in rural clinics, and the department is also looking to do some outreach programmes to cover certain areas (interior areas).
“On the vaccine supply, the condition is that we get it from the federal government, but for the state government, they are contemplating that in case the supply from the federal government is not forthcoming for the subsequent phases, then there is a contingency plan to acquire additional vaccines,” he said.
Dr Chin also said some 200,000 foreign workers who are currently in the state would be included in the third phase of the vaccination programme.
“As the Sarawak government is planning to take in additional foreign workers, they will come out with a plan on when these people come in. There will be proper quarantine procedure and so on,” he said.
Earlier this month, Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said the second phase of the vaccination programme is expected to commence next month.
