Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation, Khairy Jamaluddin is looking to achieve the completion of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme within this year.
Malaysia’s Covid-19 vaccination programme begun today [Feb 24], with Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin being the first to be inoculated.
Speaking to Channel News Asia (CNA), Khairy said the goal is to achieve 80 percent vaccination of the population as fast as possible.
“If we deliver an effective immunisation programme and you have got a decent coverage, say 50 to 60 percent of the population, and the Health Director-General feels that things are under control, then perhaps that is the right time.
It is not impossible to imagine it could take place sometime this year, by September at the earliest,” the Coordinating Minister for Covid-19 Immunisation added.
To achieve that feat, Khairy said the vaccination programme needs to reach a target of 150,000 people per day by June, when the third phase is rolled out across the vaccination centres in the country.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme’s vaccines will consist of Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac, AstraZeneca and CanSino. On top of that, Putrajaya is also ordering single-dose vaccines from Johnson and Johnson.
According to MOSTI, Putrajaya has procured over 66.7 million doses of vaccines for the population and spent almost RM3 billion to obtain them [vaccines].
Malaysia received Pfizer’s vaccines first batch that came, totalling to 312,390 doses. In a recent sharing on Clubhouse, Khairy said that the country will be scheduled to receive 1 million doses of Pfizer vaccines by the end of March.
Meanwhile, the bulk order from China’s Sinovac is scheduled to arrive on February 27 for fill and finish locally by Pharmaniaga.
Only Pfizer vaccines have been conditionally approved by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA), while approvals for the rest of vaccines are pending.
