Half of approximately 100 senior individuals have transferred their vaccine requests to the mRNA vaccine, which rolled out yesterday, due to suitability concerns, Dr Tai Wah Hou, coordinator of the Health Bureau’s Covid-19 vaccination operation, said yesterday.
The other half, meanwhile, have not made follow-up bookings.
Last month, following the latest guidelines on the application of the Sinopharm inactivated virus jab, the SAR government is only allowing individuals aged 60 or above who pass a medical screening to take the Chinese jab.
Other senior individuals shall choose, for the time being, BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine if they wish to receive a vaccination.
On recent reports from neighboring cities that side effects were observed in relation to some inactivated virus vaccine recipients, Tai said they were not necessarily connected. He added that further investigations are needed to determine the correlations.
Although both are providing inactivated virus vaccines, Macau and Hong Kong have sourced from different manufacturers.
Yesterday, cases of post-
vaccination side effects were reported in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.
Furthermore, the medical doctor said that there was no scientific evidence proving the existence of severe side effects related to the administration of the mRNA vaccine. Meanwhile, he said that the possibility of such side effects relating to the Sinopharm vaccine is one out of 1 million.
As of noon yesterday, about 40,000 bookings have been made to receive the vaccination. Among them, about 10% booked to receive the mRNA vaccine. Meanwhile, 6,500 reservations were made for individuals of age 60 or above, of whom nearly 1,500 opted for the mRNA vaccine.
Tai considered that the relatively light condition of the pandemic in Macau has not presented an urgent need for residents to take the vaccines. The government will continue its work in encouraging residents to receive the jab. AL
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