Page 16 - REAL ISSUES FOR COVID-19 VACCINE IMMUNIZATION & Pregnancy, Breastfeeding Mothers

did not provide the name of a person in charge. Hence, our staff have to do the task. They had
to call each client to remind them and to confirm their attendance. So, it is important to have
a Person in Charge of each agency to help us. If not, this will burden our staff.

Interestingly, some clients claimed that they have been forced to enrol in the vaccination
programme. They tried to skip the vaccination station. We have to be vigilant in controlling
each station to avoid anyone from skipping any station. We use a line listing number which it
will be collected at the vaccine station. This is to identify those who have actually been
injected or not. At the end of the day, we will collect all these data, we total up the papers.
The number of tagging papers must be the same as the number of consent form and the data
entered in MyVAS system.

Another challenge is that, sometimes we do not have enough vaccine recipients for one vial
of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. They either refuse or dropout at the last minute. So,
we have to prepare backups every day, and we have to tell them to stand by when needed, as
we will call.

There are also challenges in data collection, such as mistake in data entry during registration
in the vaccination centre. For example, wrong name, wrong IC or batch number. So, the
vaccinators should be trained by the MyVAS team and if possible, the same staff should do
the same tasks/rotation in the first few days so that they can be familiarized with the
procedures. For verification purpose, vaccine recipients should bring along their identity card
(IC).

There is no case of true anaphylaxis, but there were cases of immune stress related response
(ISRR) which sometimes may have similar presentation to allergy reactions. For instance,
they have symptoms of dizziness, palpitations or near syncope. We have to train our staff on
how to differentiate between anaphylaxis or ISRR.

Another challenge is the dilemma faced by patients with comorbid. Who should we check
their blood pressure? It is not feasible to check the blood pressure reading of all the vaccine
recipients as it is very time-consuming, and we have limited manpower. So, we prioritized
those who have known hypertension and history of allergy. This group of patients would be
asked to go to the blood pressure station to check their blood pressure.

One of the technical problems faced during phase one was the data management. Sometimes,
the status in MyVAS is incomplete, or it was showing the ‘status is in progress’. So, we need
to call the vaccine recipient. However, some of them do not answer the call, some of them