LABUAN, Sept 11 ― A total of 2,593 school-going children aged 16 and 17 in the duty-free-island here have begun to receive Covid-19 vaccine today in preparation for school reopening on October 3.

Labuan Health Department director Dr Ismuni Bohari said the vaccination exercise would be implemented at the two existing vaccination centres (PPVs) at the hall of Kompleks Darul Kifayah and Labuan Matriculation College (LMC).

"As we are moving towards 100 per cent population herd immunity against Covid-19, we must not let school-going children to be left out in the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK).

"This is also our efforts to mitigate the possible spread of Covid-19 among students and teachers in the school due to reopen next month,” he told Bernama today.

He said the vaccination exercise would run for four days in the first phase which would give priority to the school-going children before focusing on out-of-school children.

Dr Ismuni said the second phase for 8,225 school-going children aged 12 to 15 would begin next week and would run for two weeks.

"We will also accept walk-in students at the PPVs for those who might have been overlooked and were not listed in the first phase,” he said. 

On August 15, Senior Minister of Education Datuk Radzi Jidin said schools will reopen on October 3 in stages under the National Recovery Plan starting with students in their examination years namely Form Five and Form Six.

Labuan has 17 primary schools and 10 secondary schools, with 99 per cent of the teachers fully vaccinated. ― Bernama