GEORGE TOWN: Selangor has approved Penang's request to borrow 200,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to enable the state to finish vaccinating the remaining 225,226 people who have yet to receive their first dose by the final week of this month.
State Health Committee chairman Dr Norlela Ariffin said she had informed the state executive council (exco) meeting yesterday that Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari had approved the state's request for 200,000 doses of vaccines.
She said in the Seberang Prai Tengah (SPT) district, which is the epicentre of the spike in Covid-19 cases in Penang, some 76,000 people have yet to receive their first dose.
She added that between 75,000 and 80,000 workers in the manufacturing sector, mostly the small industries in the SPT district, who have registered with the Public-Private Partnership Industrial Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PIKAS) under the International Trade and Industry Ministry (MITI), have yet to be vaccinated either.
"We are truly grateful to (Datuk Seri) Amirudin, Selangor Health exco Dr Siti Mariah, political secretary to Amirudin, Juwairiya Zulkifli and the Selangor Health Care (SelCare).
"I had a meeting with SelCare yesterday to discuss the vaccine packages and vaccine delivery, and was assured that they could deliver the vaccines on the same day.
"Alhamdulillah, the chief secretary of the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry and the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force have given assurance to approve our application to return the vaccines back to Selangor. This is because most of the 300,000 vaccines approved for Penang in the final week of August is for the second dose and not for the first.
"Let's pray that we can achieve vaccinating everyone with at least the first dose by the end of this month or the first week of September," she said today.
Elaborating, Dr Norlela said 70 per cent of the Covid-19 infections and R0 (or R-naught) in Penang since the Movement Control Order (MCO) 3.0 were from workplaces, mainly factories.
She said, although the daily Covid-19 cases were high (spiked to 2,500 cases), thankfully 98 per cent had no symptoms or had mild symptoms.
"Nevertheless, the number of Category 5 cases with serious infection and requiring hospital care has risen to 21 cases on Tuesday.
"To prevent the 8,000 people on home quarantine from becoming more sick and moving to higher categories, the head of the Covid-19 treatment and quarantine centre (PKRC) at the Caring Society Complex with oxygen facilities for Category 3 and Category 4 cases and I have started a Covid-19 Emergency Response Team to speed up 911 response, and have started training 24 volunteers yesterday at Dewan PINTAR Tmn Guar Perahu Penanti.
"I have also proposed to the Covid-19 Committee last Friday to set up a common private PKRC to be monitored by general practitioners (GP) and private Home Surveillance Order (HSO) to reduce the burden on our state Health Department so that factories can quarantine their workers, especially in the SPT district in private PKRC to reduce the spread of Covid-19 infections to the community.
"This will reduce our R0 of infected positive persons infecting other people in their houses, dorms and community," she added.