Science, Technology, and Innovation Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin has announced that Malaysia will receive 1,000,350 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines by the end of March.
Pfizer has sent an additional 83,070 vaccine doses today [March 15], another 124,020 doses on March 22 and an additional 125,190 doses will also be delivered on March 29.
According to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), Malaysia has purchased additional Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines bringing the total allocation of Covid-19 vaccines in the country to 32 million on March 9.
Khairy said that Putrajaya has agreements with various vaccine producers that surpassed Malaysia’s needs as not all vaccines have received approval from the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA).
“We bought more to mitigate the regulatory approval and delivery risk as we were afraid that there would be a delay in delivery.
“For example, for AstraZeneca, we were supposed to receive the vaccine in the first quarter of the year but till now we have yet to receive the delivery schedule. So, it is better if we have more vaccines in our portfolio,” he added.
Currently, the NPRA is still evaluating one Covid-19 vaccine product which is the Sputnik V, produced by Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Russia.
The Coordinating Minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme also noted that the country also received 100,000 doses from Sinovac today.
“It’s better to have a stockpile of vaccines as there’s possibility that booster shots might be needed to be given next year if the Covid-19 outbreak is still raging,” he concluded.
