Malaysia’s local pharmaceutical distributors currently have very limited capacity to store or deliver large quantities of vaccines at Arctic temperatures.
If anything, the use of mRNA is safer than whole virus or DNA delivery because the mRNA is not infectious and cannot be integrated into the host genome.
The Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine is priced at US$19.50 per dose, which would amount to US$249.6 million (RM1 billion) for 12.8 million doses; it’s unclear how much the Malaysian government is paying for the vaccine.
It’s unclear how long the vaccine by Pfizer and BioNTech will protect against coronavirus infection because the vaccine has been studied for only a few months.