PETALING JAYA: Putrajaya may order more vaccine doses from Sinovac if supply issues crop up, vaccine minister Khairy Jamaluddin said today.
In a joint press conference with health minister Dr Adham Baba, Khairy said this was also made easier by Pharmaniaga’s fill-and-finish facility here in Malaysia.
“Pharmaniaga knows that in any contingency, we may call on them to produce more vaccines for the federal government. And as announced by the health director-general, the Drug Control Authority has approved Sinopharm, which will be brought in by Duopharma.
“For now, it’s only for the private market. But in case we don’t have enough supply for the national immunisation programme (PICK), we can also procure Sinopharm vaccines from Duopharma,” he said.
Despite the exponential increase in the national vaccination rate, Khairy said he was still keeping to his target of vaccinating 80% of the adult population by December.
“But things are looking good. I do believe that we can shorten the timeline. However, we are greatly dependent on vaccine supply. So we want to keep our estimates conservative.”
He added that there were still some AstraZeneca vaccine doses from the Covax initiative that have yet to be delivered, while the government could order more from the pharmaceutical firm should there be issues with the supply of the Pfizer vaccine.
“We are also closely monitoring developments in Thailand after news that they are considering limiting exports (of AstraZeneca vaccines made there). We will discuss the matter bilaterally with Thailand, which is a good neighbour,” he said.
Khairy also said volunteers in vaccination centres (PPVs) who have yet to be immunised will be given the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine as soon as possible, although most have already been vaccinated.
“Our policy now is to get them vaccinated at the end of the day using the spare doses. We have instructed for the new rotation of volunteers to be vaccinated as soon as possible,” he said.
He also addressed complaints that migrant workers were turned away at normal PPVs despite having appointments on MySejahtera and were told they could only get vaccinated under the public-private partnership immunisation programme (Pikas) for industries.
He said PPV staff have been instructed to allow these migrants with appointments to be vaccinated at the centre, reiterating that they could be immunised outside of Pikas, too.
He also said probes into the chaotic registration process for the second batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine were completed and found that there were weaknesses in the system that could not take the surge of users.
However, he did not elaborate on what further action would be taken against the party responsible for the system.
Meanwhile, when asked why mass screenings were not conducted in Selangor before July, Adham said the state was still carrying out its mass testing exercise using the RTK-Antigen test in June.
“But when we announced Phase 1 of the national recovery plan and placed Selangor under EMCO, then among our public health strategies was to increase testing, especially to detect close contacts unlinked to clusters and symptomatic cases.
“So, the increase in tests in the past week is related to what was decided by the Greater Klang Valley task force,” he said.
Adham also said that for every 1,000 vaccine doses, only 0.06% experienced serious after-effects, all of whom were treated in hospital and discharged.
He added that there have been zero reports of blood clot complications from the AstraZeneca jab.
On the prime minister’s call for greater freedom to be given for those who have been fully vaccinated, Khairy said an official announcement would be made soon.
On proposals for those given the Sinovac vaccine to be given booster Pfizer or AstraZeneca shots, he said the ministry did not have enough data to make a decision although it would continue to monitor global developments.
Khairy also said the decision to stop administering the Sinovac vaccine had nothing to do with the vaccine’s efficacy.
“We are receiving the entire delivery (of the Sinovac vaccine) by the end of this month,” he said.
Pharmaniaga had said the supply of the Sinovac vaccine under PICK had been completed, with the final batch to be supplied on July 21. Its contract with the government is to supply 12 million doses of Sinovac vaccine on a “fill and finish” basis over seven months between May and November 2021.
Khairy said the government decided to use the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the immunisation programme starting next month, while the Sinovac stockpile would be reserved for those who are allergic to other vaccines.
“For this purpose, the government has ordered three million doses of the Sinovac vaccine to be kept as a stockpile, which we will receive by the end of July or early August,” he said.
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