Menteri besar Hasni Mohammad told the state assembly today that providing the vaccine to the young group was more important than giving the third or booster dose to those already vaccinated.

“What is more important is to provide vaccination for students under 18 years old,” he said in response to a supplementary question from Yeo Tung Siong (PH-Pekan Nanas), who wanted to know whether the state government was planning to provide booster doses for frontliners.

As of yesterday, Hasni said Johor had achieved a vaccination rate of 83.1% for adults who had received at least a single dose while 52.6% had completed their vaccination.

Earlier, Hasni said Johor would receive a donation of 100,640 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine from the Singapore government.

In expressing gratitude to the Singapore government, Hasni said the republic also contributed 20,000 doses of the Sinovac vaccine to Johor on July 29.

“The state government also received 300,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from the United Arab Emirates government,” he said and thanked former foreign minister Hishammuddin Hussein for it.

Since the national Covid-19 immunisation programme was launched in March and until Sept 5, Johor has received 4,713,800 doses of vaccine.