KUCHING: The vaccination rollout for children in Sarawak aged 12 to 17 years is being finalised and will most likely be carried out in two stages starting with 15 to 17-year-olds soon.
In saying this, Local Government and Housing Minister Datuk Seri Dr Sim Kui Hian said there were an estimated 240,000 Sarawakians between 12 and 17 years old.
He pointed out that like in many countries around the world, the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) to date had only just approved Covid-19 vaccines for use in children aged 12 years and above.
“The only vaccine approved and available in Malaysia for 12-year-olds (and above) is Pfizer-BioNTech,” said the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) advisor in a Facebook post today (Aug 17).
He disclosed for the first 12 days of August in Sarawak, 10.7 percent or 832 of the positive cases reported were children under the age of six, 9.94 percent or 773 cases were between seven and 12 years and 8.65 percent or 673 cases were between 13 and 17 years.
“Children and teenagers may have mild severity but as Covid-19 is only 18 months old, there are still a lot of unknowns with long Covid-19 syndrome and paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome (PIMS).
“They have another 70 to 80 years of life left to live and more medical-social research needs to be done as cohort for many more years to come,” he said.
Dr Sim emphasised that children and teenagers also needed to apply non-pharmaceutical interventions and standard operating procedures (SOPs) such as using face masks outside the home, social distancing and avoidance of social events which amplified transmissions, especially with the presence of the Delta variant.
“Adults can transmit to children, children can transmit to adults. Family to workplace, workplace to family. Urban to kampung and longhouses, kampung and longhouses to urban,” he said.
Dr Sim said vaccinations were proven to decrease the severity of Covid-19 infection and also the risk of death from Covid-19 of infected persons.
As such, he called for the vaccination of many of the eligible population and for the continued practice of non-pharmaceutical interventions by everyone irrespective of age.
