Only 56 staff of the NCD Provincial Health Authority (NCD PHA) were vaccinated against COVID-19 out of 591 staff as of Friday the 21st of May.
The NCD COVID-19 Vaccination roll out started last Friday and it has been one week with only a handful of frontline workers volunteering to be vaccinated.
NCD PHA Acting CEO Mr Ken Wai confirmed these statistics and expressed his disappointment over the reluctancy displayed by the frontline health workers who are supposed to be the first ones to be vaccinated in order to work with the general public during this pandemic.
He said he understands it is not mandatory for everyone to get vaccinated, but he did not expect such response from health workers.
“People are believing all this misleading information on social media and we are struggling to get them vaccinated.” Me Wai said they are still pushing for more people to get vaccinated this week and he hopes more of his staff volunteer to receive the vaccine.
Meanwhile the public in NCD have been showing up voluntarily to receive the vaccine, however Mr Wai said they will prioritize frontline workers and companies with their employees deemed as frontline workers.
“I’m happy to see the public showing up to receive the vaccine but we do not have enough supplies to vaccinate everyone.”
“That is why we will only consider frontline workers and others whom we believe also serve the purpose as frontline workers.” Said Mr Wai.
The NCD PHA has been allocated 4000 doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccine and out that 4000, 3651 have been used up already.
It is understood the World Health Organization and UNICEF have allocated an additional 2000 doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccine to NCD on Friday upon the request from NCD PHA for an additional supply of the vaccine.