There has been no talks on a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, says Permanent Secretary for Health and Medical Services Dr James Fong.

Dr Fong said the ministry was more concerned about deploying the booster shots.

“We are just worried about the third dose for now,” he said.

“Once we deploy enough of the third dose then we may consider the fourth dose, but I may suggest that we continue to watch that space because we cannot make any definitive statements on that.”

Dr Fong also revealed that there were no plans to make the booster shots mandatory as yet.

“At the moment once we put our deployment capability for the booster shots out, we will see how quickly or how fast we can deploy the booster dose,” he said.

“If there are potential threats out there epidemiologically that may make it more urgent for us to get the booster doses out then we probably consider it but for now we would like to use the goodwill that has been generated from achieving 93 per cent fully vaccinated coverage.”

He said the ministry had hoped that the uptake on the booster dose would be the same.

Dr Fong had also reassured of the progress made in the discussion of securing vaccines for children vaccination.

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