COVID: Walk-in vaccinations for senior citizens in Klang Valley

PUTRAJAYA: Individuals aged 60 and above in the Klang Valley will soon be allowed to walk into a vaccination centre (PPV) and get their COVID-19 jab.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba said the pilot project would be introduced in the Klang Valley PPVs before being expanded to the whole country.

"They (senior citizens) can just walk in...and we will supply vaccines to the Klang Valley PPVs for this purpose," he told a special press conference by the Ministry of Health (MOH) here today.

To date, he said about 2.47 million of the 2.98 million seniors who registered have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

Meanwhile, Dr Adham said the industrial PPVs or PPVINs could operate 24 hours a day to speed up the vaccinations for industrial workers in the Klang Valley.

In another development, Dr Adham said a total of 2,229 general practitioners (GP) in Selangor and 1,254 GPs in Kuala Lumpur had been allowed to participate in the vaccination drive under the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK).

The Health Ministry estimated that over 300,000 vaccinations can be administered daily once everyone is involved.

The total number of vaccines dispensed nationwide since PICK was implemented on Feb 24 was 12,647,558 doses.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) said in a statement that further information about the walk-in vaccination approach will be announced soon.

In this regard, CITF said that people aged 60 and above who do not have a vaccination appointment are asked not to go to any PPV tomorrow.

"This is to finalise the planning of this initiative, for example the logistics arrangements as well as the delivery of vaccine supplies at all PPVs.

"Equally important is to plan the timing of this walk-in initiative to avoid congestion at PPVs when the number of COVID-19 infection is rising," according to the statement.

-- BERNAMA