According to Khairy Jamaluddin, parents will not be pressured to vaccinate their children against Covid-19 because the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Kids (PICKids) is optional.
The Ministry of Health wants to ensure that parents make an informed decision about whether or not to allow their children to receive Covid-19 vaccinations.
Khairy went on to say that children would not be subjected to the same vaccine mandates as adults, and that they would be able to visit the premises even if they were unvaccinated.
“Adults are not permitted to visit eateries or shopping malls unless they are completely vaccinated, but we will not subject kids to the same restrictions,” he continues.
“What we want is for parents to be convinced rather than obliged to vaccinate their children,” he said at the PICKids launch at Hospital Tunku Azizah here on 3rd February.
If children without vaccine protection were infected with Covid-19, Khairy explained they were at risk of developing multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) or Long Covid.
There have been 9,413 Covid-19 cases involving kids aged seven to 12 since January.
Although this is insignificant in comparison to adults, children who are infected are at danger of MIS-C as well as Long Covid, the entire effects of which we do not yet know.
“The greatest approach to protect children from the effects of Covid-19 is to get them vaccinated,” he added that his six-year-old kids had already been enrolled with PICKids.
Before approving the Covid-19 vaccine for Malaysian children, Khairy noted the ministry and its experts had performed a thorough examination of children’s immunisation programmes in other countries such as the United States, Singapore, and Australia.
To date, 15% of eligible kids have registered for PICKids.
Children would receive the Cominarty vaccination from Pfizer-BioNTech under PICKids, but at a quarter of the dose given to adults.
Eight weeks had been designated as the time between two dosages.
Source: The star
