The government’s Covid-19 Vaccine Supplies Access Guarantee Special Committee will table a national vaccination programme to Cabinet early January 2021.
Malaysia will be receiving one million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s ultra-cold Covid-19 vaccine in February 2021, but regulatory approval is estimated to take 90 to 120 working days.
The government is also procuring AstraZeneca’s vaccine under COVAX to cover another 10% of the Malaysian population, on top of direct purchases to cover 10% of the population.
Singapore signed NDAs with Covid-19 vaccine developers to access confidential data on the progress of candidate vaccines that was not yet available in published literature, without being tied to purchasing the vaccines.
The Penang state health department says in response that it, Socso, and Penang-based private medical practitioners have agreed for Covid-19 screenings to be conducted in stages as a temporary measure.
The Malaysian government is finalising agreements to buy Chinese vaccines Sinovac and CanSino, as well as Russia’s Sputnik V shot, that include domestic fill-and-finish work.
Dr Kelvin Yii says the best platform for Khairy Jamaluddin to clarify Malaysia's Covid-19 vaccine procurement is at the parliamentary select committee on health, science and innovation.
While much of the confusion is due to the complexity of pharmaceutical procurement, a large portion of the attacks have been based on misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories which continue to persist in the face of facts.