KUALA LUMPUR: The country's daily vaccination rate, which now exceeds the world average for daily vaccinations per capita, means that Malaysia is on the right track to achieving herd immunity, said Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

He said the latest development would enable the country to achieve herd immunity in the near future and, subsequently, return to normalcy.

"Daily vaccination (in Malaysia) lately has consistently reached 250,000 doses of vaccine jabs per day and is targeted to reach 300,000 doses of vaccine jabs a day from this month," he said in a statement on the development of the National Recovery Plan and Enhanced Movement Control Order today.

Yesterday, a total of 324,745 doses of COVID-19 vaccine jabs were administered, taking the total number of vaccine jabs administered nationwide to 11,075,493 doses.

He also urged the public to continue to practise 'self lockdown' by staying at home and to only go out if necessary as well as to comply with the stipulated SOP to reduce the infectivity rate within the community.

Ismail Sabri said that the World Health Organisation (WHO) had, through the COVID-19 Technical Committee in a recent media conference, released an analysis of the latest data findings on the development of COVID-19 cases worldwide.

"In Africa, the rate of COVID-19 infection has risen to 16.7 per cent, while in the eastern Mediterranean area it was 16.4 per cent.

"The analysis of countries in Europe also recorded a 33 per cent increase in infection rate and 8.6 per cent in parts of Southeast Asia," he said.

The increase in the rate of infection is due to several key factors, including the detection of new variants that have a more serious impact on individuals and spread faster than normal infections.

-- BERNAMA