Malaysia aims to vaccinate 3 million 12 – 17-year-olds against COVID-19 by end of this year

Health Minister Khair Jamaluddin has said that 3 million adolescents aged between 12 to 17 years old are set to get their COVID-19 vaccinations before the new school year starts. At the moment, vaccinations for teens have already started in Sarawak and the programme will soon be expanded to other states.

Khairy added that the Education Ministry is expected to announce the reopening of schools in stages tomorrow and the government aims to vaccinate all adolescents by as early as January 2022. During his working visit to Penang, Khairy announced that about 130,000 teens in Penang will start getting their COVID-19 vaccine jabs in the next two weeks. The vaccinations will be conducted in schools and the students will be given their appointments based on a predetermined priority list. Parents of eligible teens will be contacted for permission to vaccinate their children.

The Minister added that the schedule for teenage vaccinations in other states will be announced next week. Pfizer is currently the only COVID-19 vaccine that has been given conditional approval by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency to vaccinate teens aged between 12 to 17 years old.

As of 10th September, Malaysia has fully vaccinated over 16.8 million people or 51.6% of the total population. 90.5% of total adults nationwide have received at least one dose and 72% of them have completed their vaccinations. As mentioned by Khairy last week, vaccinations for teens can start in states that have fully vaccinated over 80% of its adult population. Based on JKJAV’s latest stats, the Klang Valley has fully vaccinated 99.9% of its adult population, followed by Labuan at 95.9%, Sarawak with 88.1% and Negeri Sembilan at 86.9%.

Deputy Health Director-General Datuk Dr HIshamshah Mohd Ibrahim recently said that Malaysia needs to increase its population vaccination target from 70% to 90% in order to achieve herd immunity. This is due to the Delta variant which is more transmissible as one positive case can infect nine other individuals.

This is one of the reasons why it is important for Malaysia to start vaccinating teens especially when the number of new COVID-19 cases within the age group is increasing.

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Alexander Wong