By Norrasyidah Arshad
PETALING JAYA, June 19 — Orang Asli throughout Selangor will be vaccinated with the CanSino Covid-19 vaccine produced in China by September this year.
State executive councillor for Orang Asli affairs Hee Loy Sian said the single-dose vaccine is more suitable as most of them are afraid of being injected and face difficulty in getting out of their village.
"Pfizer or Sinovac are not suitable because they need two doses. So we chose CanSino and will gather them at a place to hold the vaccination programme.
“20,000 Orang Asli are recorded and we will confirm those who are eligible to be vaccinated. We expect it to be as early as next month or the latest by September,” he said when met at the free Covid-19 community screening programme at Dewan Komuniti MBPJ here today.
He added that the vaccine registration rate for the minority group is still low due to technology problems including on internet network coverage.
Due to that, he said volunteers from the Covid-19 Immunisation Outreach programme (Imunisel) have been mobilised to help Orang Asli register manually.
"But there are Orang Asli who have been vaccinated based on their own initiative. They are aware of the importance of vaccines,” he said.
Recently the government gave conditional registration for the emergency use of the CanSino and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, both which only require one dose.
