AstraZeneca Round 2: 956,609 doses fully booked within an hour

The COVID-19 immunisation task force (CITF) has issued a statement to confirm that all 1,261,000 AstraZeneca doses under Round 2 have been fully booked today. It also apologised for the technical issues on their vaksincovid.gov.my website which left many people disappointed this afternoon.

A total of 275,208 doses have been booked by senior citizens (aged 60 and above) since it was open on 23rd May. In addition, a total of 29,183 waiting list individuals from Round 1 were also included in Round 2.

After Round 2 was open to all adults aged 18 years old and above today, the remaining 956,609 doses were snapped up within an hour. That’s an average of 265 bookings per second. As a comparison, Round 1 which offered over 260,000 doses took more than 3 hours for all slots to be fully booked.

The CITF has acknowledged the technical issues which have caused a great deal of frustration to users trying to book online. Initially, the button to book didn’t appear on the main page and JKJAV tweeted that the online booking was delayed until 12.15pm.

Eventually, the page did load but many users couldn’t view the available slots when they tap on the respective states. Some that have managed to click on a green slot were greeted with a message that it has been fully booked.

CITF is viewing the complaints seriously and action will be taken against the relevant parties. The task force acknowledges there’s a high interest from the public to get vaccinated but they have failed to make a booking. It assured that those who have previously registered for the vaccine will still their get jab under the mainstream National COVID-19 immunisation program.

For those who have successfully booked their slots, the appointments will be sent out in the next couple of days. Round 1 of the AstraZeneca opt-in programme is currently ongoing at 4 vaccination centres in the Klang Valley.

For Round 2, the vaccinations will take place between 7th June until 27th July 2021 at 8 vaccination centres located in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Johor, Penang, Kuching and Miri.

CITF has yet to announce if there will be a third round of AstraZeneca opt-in booking. In total, Malaysia has procured 12.8 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, which is sufficient to cover 20% of the targetted population. The current mainstream immunisation program is currently administering Pfizer and Sinovac vaccines nationwide.

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