Three Phases of COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout in M’sia to Start This Month Until Feb 2022

By Karissa Lund  •  04 Feb 2021 in News

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Today (Feb 4) during a live address, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin gave the details on who will be involved in the three COVID-19 vaccination phases – with the first phase to be rolled out at the end of this month.

“I would like to announce that the government will start rolling out the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme starting at the end of this month. We target that 80% of the country’s population or 26.5 million individuals will receive the vaccine that will be given out for free to Malaysian citizens,” he said.

Here’s a simple breakdown:

1. First Phase – It will involve some 500,000 health and non-health frontliners. The phase will start by the end of this month and expected to end in April 2020.

2. Second Phase – This involves COVID-19 high-risk groups, namely senior citizens, vulnerable individuals with comorbidities and disabled persons. It is expected to go on from April to August, involving around 9.4 million people.

3. Third Phase – This programme will involve adults aged 18 and above, who will be given the jabs from May this year to February next year, running concurrently with the second phase.

According to FMT, more than 600 storage centres will be set up nationwide, along with vaccination centres in public and private health facilities, stadiums, convention centres, public halls and universities.

“This phase is important to develop herd immunity and then to control the pandemic,” he said in a national address today.

Muhyiddin also reminded that this will be the largest vaccination programme in the country’s history. It will be led by Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin through a special task force that will manage the implementation of the programme.

The reason behind this is to ensure that the health ministry is able to focus its efforts on the country’s healthcare services in battling the pandemic, according to Muhyiddin. He added that further details on the programme’s registration process and centre locations will be announced in the near future.