KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 8 — Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine can be used in Malaysia after pharmaceutical regulators gave it conditional registration, Khairy Jamaluddin said today.
The minister of science, technology, and innovation, in his tweet, congratulated the national Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA), which is under the Ministry of Health (MOH), on the quick registration, ahead of expected vaccine deliveries to Malaysia next month.
“I was just informed by (Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah) that NPRA has given conditional registration for the Pfizer vaccine,” Khairy, who is also the co-chairperson of the Covid-19 Vaccine Supplies Access Guarantee Special Committee (JKJAV), tweeted today.
“We are still waiting for a few additional info from Pfizer but this means it can be used in Malaysia.”
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has already been previously approved by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Malaysia has procured Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech for 20 per cent of the population, which covers 6.4 million people, with an option to purchase an additional 12.8 million doses for another 6.4 million people on the two-dose regimen.
One million doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be shipped to Malaysia by the end of next month and will be first given to health care workers and people with underlying health conditions.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine uses the mRNA technology that gives instructions to the cells to make a harmless piece of the spike protein found on the surface of the Covid-19 virus.
The immune system recognises that the protein doesn’t belong in the body and begins to build an immune response, making antibodies against the protein like what happens in a natural Covid-19 infection.
The vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95 per cent and because of its storage temperature of -70 degrees Celsius, Khairy previously said that urban areas will be getting the Pfizer vaccine, while rural areas may be getting normal fridge temperature vaccines like the AstraZeneca-Oxford University shot.
