MP SPEAKS | The Health Ministry must look at thoroughly investigating allegations of improper Covid-19 vaccine administrations. This is in view of viral videos of the public getting alleged lower dose of vaccines since the implementation of the AstraZeneca vaccine opt-in programme.

This is on top of creating a proper monitoring mechanism for the whole National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme to improve public confidence and address hesitancy with the programme.

Since the circulation of such videos, the public has been questioning the effectiveness of the whole inoculation process and even raising doubts about whether they got the right dosage and have been properly immunised.

Such doubts and possible mismanagement have to be properly handled and addressed and should not be censored in any way.

We have received reports that members of the public were stopped from recording or even taking photos during their vaccine jab.

This does not instil confidence in the programme and should not happen but instead, their concerns should be properly addressed.

While it could be human error, a proper monitoring and quality control system should be in place especially in view of the expected increasing rate of vaccination once our vaccine supply increases.

With more vaccinations happening, the tendency of possible human error happening may increase. Thus, on top of a proper monitoring system, the Health Ministry must also come up with a comprehensive “Covid-19 Vaccine Administration Errors and Deviations Guidelines” in case of a situation like this.

This will give clear guidelines and even resources to prevent a vaccine administration error, ways of proper reporting in the event of a vaccine administration error, as well as actions to take after an error has occurred.

This includes ways to inform the recipient of the error, ways to determine how the error occurred, and strategies to prevent it from happening again. This should cover all types of vaccines and their possible differences in terms of administration.

Such guidelines have been produced and implemented by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US including a comprehensive study of the more common administration errors reported, along with some of their potential causes and ways to avoid them.

This will give frontliners clear guidelines to respond in such a situation and also gives recipients peace of mind and more confidence in the programme itself.

That is why I urge the ministry to come up with a proper monitoring mechanism as well as a comprehensive guideline to properly address this issue.

KELVIN YII LEE WUEN is DAP's MP for Bandar Kuching.

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