Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Khairy Jamaluddin has slammed anti-vaxxers that claim COVID-19 vaccines are not effective and he urged netizens to read beyond the headline. The issue arises after Health Director-General Dr Noor Hisham had posted on Saturday that 40 healthcare workers have been infected after receiving their second dose of the vaccine.
To recap, the Health D-G said a total of 40 frontliners that have completed their vaccination were infected. 9 of them have contracted COVID-19 more than 2 weeks after receiving their second dose and 31 were infected less than 2 weeks of receiving the second dose. He also added that another 142 healthcare workers were infected after receiving their first dose.
Dr Noor Hisham has provided a chart of healthcare workers getting infected with COVID-19 between 7th March until 15th April below:
Dr Noor Hisham has highlighted that all infected vaccinated healthworkers had experienced less severe symptoms. This is an indication that the vaccine is effective in preventing severe diseases, hospitalisation and death due to COVID-19. In his post, he shared that getting vaccinated doesn’t mean that we can relax all public health measures and you still need to adhere to the SOP after receiving the jab.
In Khairy’s post, he said that 31 out of 40 healthcare workers that were infected have not yet received their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. He also shared that an individual is only considered fully vaccinated 2 weeks after receiving the second dose.
There seems to be a huge discrepancy in the number of vaccinated frontliners that have contracted COVID-19. Based on Khairy’s post, it seems to imply that 31 healthcare workers that have contracted COVID-19 only received one dose but according to Dr Noor Hisham, 31 were frontliners that have received two doses but they were infected less than 2 weeks after receiving the second jab.
We have reached out to Khairy for clarification and we will update if there’s a response.
Accurate reporting necessary to build trust
There has been a number of inaccurate reporting by the media, particularly on the number of individuals that have received the vaccine and the number of people that have completed their vaccination with two doses.
It appears to be some sort of confusion between the number doses and the number of individuals getting vaccinated. As of 7th April, a total of 862,445 doses have been administered and 328,254 individuals have completed their 2nd dose. However, the Ministry of Health had wrongly posted that 862,445 individuals have received the vaccine. For those who are not aware, the number reported for 1st doses also include those who have completed their 2nd dose.
In another incident, Bernama has wrongly reported that 653,531 individuals have completed their second dose of vaccine as of 14th April. This is clearly a mistake as 653,531 is referring to the number of 1st dose administered and the actual number of completed vaccination was 425,164.
In both instances, we have highlighted the error to the Ministry of Health, Health Director-General and Khairy Jamaluddin, but we didn’t get any clarification or corrections on the matter.
We hope that these discrepancies can be fixed so that the public are informed with the right data. Disseminating correct information is important to build trust and any errors must be corrected quickly.
As of 18th April at 11.59pm, a total of 443,029 individuals have received their 2nd dose. To keep track on the number of completed vaccinations, you can also refer to our vaccine tracker on the right panel of our site (desktop) or on the frontpage of SoyaCincau.com for mobile.
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