By Nasuha Badrul Huzaini
SHAH ALAM, Aug 19 — Selangor will return some 500,000 doses of vaccines, which the state government had procured, to the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) to be distributed to several other states.
Menteri Besar Dato’ Amirudin Shari said the vaccines are the remaining stock from the Operation Surge Capacity (OSC) initiative.
“We have paid for 1.25 million doses from the total reservation of 2.5 million doses allocated for OSC.
“Currently, we have a surplus of vaccines in stock from the campaign. After discussing with Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, we have decided to offer the excess as this would help to address the shortage of vaccine supply in other states.
“The CITF will decide how the distribution of the vaccine will be carried out. From what I was informed, among the states that will receive the doses include Kedah, Penang and Sabah,” he said during a virtual press conference broadcast live on Media Selangor Facebook today.
Amirudin said initially, the vaccines were procured in preparation for the booster shots for Selangor people in the future.
“However, for now, we want it to be used by the other states first. We anticipate that the stock will be returned to the state government in a month or two,” he said.
The OSC, which is managed by both the CITF and the state government, was initiated to accelerate the vaccine rollout in the Klang Valley and had targeted to administer at least the first dose to 1.3 million people in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur from July 16 until July 25.
The Special Committee for Ensuring Access to Covid-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV), citing the data from the CITF, stated that a cumulative total of 6,553,311 individuals in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur have received their first dose as of yesterday.
