TAWAU: Two more vaccination centres (PPVs) will be opened in Balung and Merotai near here soon to enable the rural communities to be\u00a0vaccinated against COVID-19.
\nChairman\u00a0of Tawau Disaster Operations Command Centre Arnold Joibi said the decision to open the new PPVs was made after taking into account the geographical factors of the vast areas of Tawau and Kalabakan.
\n\u201cWe hope the opening of the PPVs at the Institute of Teachers Education in Balung and at the Datuk Najib Hall in Merotai will increase the rural communities\u2019\u00a0access to the vaccine and more will register to get vaccinated,\u201d he told Bernama.
\nAt present, the vaccination for the people in the rural areas was\u00a0offered at the PPVs at Tawau Community Hall, Tawau\u00a0Hospital and Tawau Health Clinic, all of which were located here in the city and would need almost three hours for the rural people from Kampung Kalabakan, for example, to reach it.
\nAccording to the\u00a0COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Special Committee\u2019s website, a total of 162,814 people\u00a0had been vaccinated\u00a0in Sabah, which is only 5.55 per cent of the Sabah population, the lowest compared to other states, despite having 29 PPVs statewide.
\nArnold said the vaccine registrations among the rural communities in Tawau were still low and only 50,000 registrations out of 441,000 population had been recorded so far, with only\u00a011,000 have been vaccinated.
\n\u201cWe hope village heads, as well as Community Development Leaders, will help register the people for vaccination, especially those in remote areas because this is the only way we can achieve herd immunity,\u201d he said.
\nBernama checks found that the absence of a PPV in their areas was one of the factors for the rural communities to adopt the wait-and-see\u00a0approach to register for vaccination.
\nA resident in Merotai, Paridah Aco, 57, said the fact that the PPVs were all located so far from home had forced her to think twice, especially after taking into consideration the many restrictions, including transportation issue,\u00a0she had to\u00a0face\u00a0to go\u00a0to the city.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not that I don\u2019t want to be vaccinated. It\u2019s just that the PPV is so far away. If there is one that is near, then I will be more than happy to get it. So, I hope the government can consider providing the facility for the rural communities,\u201d she said.
\nRamlan Bidung, 49, in\u00a0Kalabakan, who has also yet to register for vaccination, admitted that he had very little knowledge about the importance of vaccination and that he would have transportation problem\u00a0to go to the city.
\n\u201cI\u2019m aware that there is an ongoing\u00a0vaccination programme, but I don\u2019t really know the importance of the vaccine. We don\u2019t even talk about vaccine here, it\u2019s also too far to travel to Tawau for vaccination. We\u2019ll just wait and see,\u201d he said.
\nThe people in the remote areas should be given more information and exposure about the COVID vaccine and\u00a0a PPV should also be open in Kakabakan to ensure smooth implementation of the vaccination programme, he added.
\n— BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TAWAU: Two more vaccination centres (PPVs) will be opened in Balung and Merotai near here soon to enable the rural communities to be\u00a0vaccinated against COVID-19. Chairman\u00a0of Tawau Disaster Operations Command Centre Arnold Joibi said the decision to open the new PPVs was made after taking into account the geographical factors of the vast areas of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":4114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4115,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions\/4115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}