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Kuala Lumpur: The general public’s response to the Covid-19 vaccine booster dose is still unsatisfactory, says health minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa.

However, Zaliha told the Dewan Rakyat that there has been an increase in the number of Malaysians receiving the booster dose following campaigns held by the health ministry.

“For the first booster dose, the figure increased from 49.9% (of the population) to over 50% now, while for the second booster shot, it increased from 1.9% to 2.2% a few weeks ago,” she said during the question and answer session.

She was responding to a question from Rosol Wahid (PN-Hulu Terengganu), who wanted to know if the government was satisfied with the public’s response to the booster dose.

Zaliha said the ministry had taken various steps to encourage more people to get the booster dose, including allowing appointments through the MySejahtera application without a specific time or location and offering walk-in vaccinations for high-risk groups.

Meanwhile, the minister said the Covid-19 infection trend in the first month of 2023 was relatively stable, adding that the number of daily cases remained around 500 since last month and dropped to 226 yesterday.

“The seven-day average of new cases ranged from 187 to 511 cases throughout January 2023.

“The infectivity rate (Rt) remained below 1.0 since the 46th epidemiological week of 2022 (Nov 13 to Nov 19) and 0.8 during the fourth epidemiological week of 2023 (Jan 22 to Jan 28),” said Zaliha.