Many parents taking wait-and-see approach to child vaccine jabs, says deputy health minister

Most parents have not given permission for their children to receive a Covid-19 vaccine jab as they prefer to wait and see, due to concerns over the side effects of vaccination, says Deputy Health Minister Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali.

He said children usually experience only mild side effects while vaccination can protect them from severe Covid-19 infection.

He said three states – Sabah, Terengganu and Kelantan – had recorded a child vaccination rate of less than 10%.

“We hope parents will immediately give their consent so that efforts to increase the number of vaccinated children can go full swing,” he said at a press conference after inspecting the progress of the National Covid-19 Children’s Immunisation Programme (PICKids) at SK Wira in Kuantan today.

He added that as of Wednesday, only 58 children were reported to have experienced adverse events following immunisation or AEFI.

PICKids aims to vaccinate 3.6 million children aged five to 11. A total of 708,187 children or 19.9% had received a first dose of vaccine as of yesterday.

Noor Azmi said an outreach vaccination programme had been implemented for Orang Asli children in Pahang.

“Orang Asli children are not being left out of vaccinations. I was informed that more than 700 Orang Asli children in Pos Lenjang, Lipis, received a jab last week, and Pahang has 18 outreach teams to be deployed to remote locations,” he said.

On a separate matter, Noor Azmi said investigations were still underway following the death of a two-month-old baby boy at Hospital Raja Perempuan Zainab II in Kelantan.

The media had reported yesterday that Muhammad Hilman Firdaus’ family was taking legal action against the hospital.