KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 12 — Registration for Covid-19 vaccination to members of the public is expected to kick off in March and this will be on a volunteer basis, said Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

He said there are five ways for the public to sign up for the vaccine, including via the MySejahtera application.

"If they have no access to MySejahtera, they may go to the JKJAV (Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Special Committee) website, which will be launched by the prime minister next week.

"In addition there is the hotline (number to be fixed later), manual registration at public and private clinics and hospitals, and lastly, for people living in the rural areas, we will be working with the state government to get them to register the recipients including senior citizens,” he said during the Ruang Bicara programme aired on Bernama TV, yesterday.

Khairy, who is also the coordinating minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme reiterated that the vaccination programme will begin with frontline workers.

"We will evaluate every application as many have requested that they (applicants) be categorised as frontliners.

"I can verify that Prime Minister (Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin) will be the first person to receive the Pfizer vaccine, followed by the Health director-general (Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah), doctors, nurses and others. Ministers will have their turn a bit later,” he said.

On February 4, Muhyiddin was reported to have said the three-phase National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme would start at the end of this month, with the government targeting 80 per cent of the country’s population or 26.5 million individuals to receive the vaccine free of charge.

The first phase, from February to April, is for the 500,000 frontliners who are directly involved in the fight against Covid-19, while the second phase, from April to August, for the high-risk group, comprising senior citizens aged 60 and above and the vulnerable group with morbidity problems, such as heart disease , obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as persons with disabilities (PwD).

The third phase is from May to February next year and it is for those aged 18 and above.

On January 8, Khairy announced that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had been registered by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA), thus giving conditional approval for the use of the vaccine in the country.

Apart from Malaysia, 49 other countries have approved the vaccine and some of these countries have started using the vaccine.

The Pfizer vaccine is also the first Covid-19 vaccine to be validated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for emergency use. — Bernama