PETALING JAYA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Malaysia is edging closer to having half its adult population jabbed at least once with a Covid-19 vaccine, said Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin on Friday (July 23).
In a Facebook post, Tan Sri Muhyiddin said 46.7 per cent of the country's adult population have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and 21.8 per cent have received both doses.
He added that since July 12, the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme has successfully dispensed more than 400,000 doses almost daily.
Mr Muhyiddin said that the country hit a new record on Thursday (July 22) with a daily vaccination rate of 507,050 doses, adding that this means 10,920,862 people have received their first dose and 5,104,054 people have completed their inoculation since the vaccination programme began.
"This achievement is in line with the target set and must be further improved, so that we can achieve the target of 26 million fully vaccinated Malaysians," said Mr Muhyiddin.
"With vaccination, we will be able to help reduce the burden of cases in hospitals and severe infections," he added in the Facebook post, which also thanked all Malaysians - especially front-liners - for contributing to the success of the immunisation programme.
Malaysia has more than 140,000 active Covid-19 cases, with nearly 1,000 patients in intensive care units. It has been consistently recording more than 10,000 cases daily, with over 100 deaths a day, for the past week.
The country recorded 13,034 infections on Thursday, the second-highest daily tally since the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, Malaysian police are investigating recent cases where empty syringes were allegedly used during the vaccination process, after several individuals recorded themselves while getting inoculated and claimed that they were not given any Covid-19 vaccine.
Several videos have since gone viral on messaging applications and social media.
Malaysian Health Minister Adham Baba said on Friday that the empty syringes had no links to vaccines being sold on the black market, and that action had already been taken.
"No malicious intent was found but it was due to human error. This was a very isolated case in comparison to the 15 million successful inoculations," he said.
Dr Adham said stringent standard operating procedures were in place and random medical audits were conducted at vaccination centres.
He added that there were vaccination centre managers from the Health Ministry stationed at the sites to monitor the vaccination process.
