Science, technology and innovation minister Khairy Jamaluddin said about 228,000 senior citizens have registered so far, adding that the government will continue to prioritise the elderly until the noon deadline.
In a press conference, Khairy also said some 320,000 doses of the Sinovac fill-and-finish vaccine by Pharmaniaga will be distributed by this week.
He denied there were production issues with the locally produced finished vaccine, adding that he is confident Pharmaniaga is capable of meeting its contractual obligations on the quantity of doses and the timeline of delivery.
He explained that the delay in distributing the vaccine, which arrived in February, was because the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) had to conduct stability tests before giving the final stamp of approval.
This took around 10 weeks to complete, with multiple tests done as well as data and reports submitted to the NPRA.
“Because of the stringent process required by the NPRA, this means the fill-and-finish product from the plant in Malaysia is the same quality as the Sinovac vaccines received from the factory in China.”
Khairy also warned that legal action will be taken against those spreading rumours that the locally finished jabs were of inferior quality compared with the vaccines coming from the Sinovac factory in Beijing, China.
“I completely deny and refute the point that the fill-and-finish product is of inferior quality. This is a most irresponsible allegation,” he said.
The minister in charge of the national immunisation programme said Putrajaya’s vaccination strategy remains unchanged, in that it aims to give any vaccine available as quickly as possible to whoever wants to be vaccinated.
Asked on the effectiveness of the available vaccines to the new variants, he said the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines have been found to be effective against the mutations while Sinovac will publish a report on this next month.
“Early correspondence (with Sinovac) shows effectiveness against the new strains,” he said.
He added that the immunisation task force was still discussing the proposal to increase dosage intervals so as to ensure as many people as possible may be given their first dose.
The standard dosage intervals remain for now, while the task force will elaborate and discuss the proposal further this Thursday.
“We will discuss and take into consideration emerging data coming from the UK that the full two doses are required for effective protection against new variants,” he said.
Meanwhile, nearly 11 million people have registered to be vaccinated so far. About one and a half million people have been given their first dose, while more than 900,000 have completed their second dose.
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