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.
Safety or lower efficacy issues with Chinese vaccines, which have yet to show Phase 3 clinical trial results, could delay vaccine access for Asian countries to the end of 2021, says Fitch Solutions.
Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii urges the government to expedite the Covid-19 vaccine approval process during the pandemic in the interest of public health.
The National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency’s (NPRA) evaluation of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine will take a maximum of 120 working days, but it can be approved earlier if there is sufficient data from Pfizer, says Dr Adham Baba.
Lee Hsien Loong says Singapore signed advance purchase agreements and made early down payments for “the most promising” Covid-19 vaccine candidates, including with Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Sinovac.
With this recommendation by members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), the FDA will likely grant emergency-use authorisation to Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine within days.
Khairy Jamaluddin says Malaysia’s Covid-19 vaccine deal with Pfizer is “significantly” less than RM100 per dose, covering delivery to multiple points of vaccination in the country.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose vaccine has been shown to start preventing Covid-19 even after the first dose, suggesting that those who missed the second dose may still have some form of protection from the coronavirus.