Take-up rate for Sinovac Covid jab increases

The head of the community vaccination centre in Jordan, which offers the Sinovac Covid-19 jab, says there has been an increase in people turning up for their bookings in the past two days. The take-up rate dropped following reports of deaths and illnesses after the jab, but so far the government says there’s no vaccine link for two deaths, while it investigates a third.

Dr Samuel Kwok said 75 percent of people with bookings on Wednesday turned up. However, he said it was important that medical staff working in the community vaccination centres didn’t become distracted from their main task, by people wanting to discuss their individual health concerns.

“This whole practice of having a community vaccination centre, people can have easy and smooth, and quick vaccinations in the centres,” he said.

“But if we start being a medical consultation centre, then it’s a whole different thing. And this doesn’t help because the doctors in the centres are not the doctors taking care of those people originally. So it should be better – if they have issues, they have problems, they have questions – they should go to their own family doctors.

Government figures show more than 130,000 people have received the coronavirus jab since its programme started almost two weeks ago, with a take-up rate of 72 percent for Sinovac, and 91 percent for BioNTech jabs – which started on Wednesday.

Seven people were taken to hospital on Wednesday after getting vaccinated. Five of them were discharged, with the remaining two admitted for observation.