KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 29 — Malaysia’s Covid-19 vaccine breakthrough deaths amount to about 0.013 per cent, or 130 fatalities per one million fully vaccinated people, according to official figures.
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the country recorded a total 1,751 Covid-19 deaths among fully vaccinated people (7.5 per cent) and 5,431 deaths among partially vaccinated people (23 per cent), out of 24,565 coronavirus fatalities reported as of September 22.
“When compared against the 18,986,347 population that had received two vaccine doses as of September 22, the deaths due to Covid-19 infection among those who received complete vaccination was 0.013 per cent, equivalent to 130 out of a million fully vaccinated population,” Khairy said in a written parliamentary reply yesterday.
He said this in response to Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen’s request for the minister to state the vaccination status of those who died due to Covid-19 based on whether they had received their first or second dose and the days after the last dose.
A recent real-world study led by the Institute for Clinical Research (ICR) on coronavirus vaccine efficacy found that complete inoculation with Covid-19 vaccines is 83 per cent effective against admission into intensive care and can prevent death by 88 per cent.
Findings by the Real-World Evaluation of Covid-19 Vaccines Under the Malaysia National Covid-19 Immunisation Program (RECoVaM) showed that the overall ICU rate among fully vaccinated individuals — 14 days after the second vaccine dose in a two-dose regime — stood at only 0.0066 per cent.
This is equivalent to 953 ICU admissions in 14,500,984 fully vaccinated individuals tracked from April 1 to September 12 who received two doses of either Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, or Sinovac.
The RECoVaM survey also found that breakthrough Covid-19 death rates were low among fully vaccinated individuals at 0.010 per cent or 1,445 deaths out of 14.5 million people.
