PETALING JAYA: The Sinovac vaccine can reduce the risk of death among Covid-19 patients by up to 84%, the health ministry said today.
Citing data from the real-world evaluation of Covid-19 vaccines under the Malaysia national Covid-19 immunisation programme (RECoVaM), the ministry said the Pfizer jab decreased the risk of death by 93%.
In a Twitter post, it said the AstraZeneca vaccine showed the best result, with the lowest rate of “breakthrough deaths”, with the study finding that the jab reduced the risk of deaths among Covid-19 patients by 96%.
This was based on a survey led by the health ministry’s Institute for Clinical Research (ICR) on 1,261,270 individuals.
Yesterday, ICR director Dr Kalaiarasu Peariasamy said deaths among fully vaccinated individuals due to Covid-19, or breakthrough deaths, only made up less than 0.01% of the 14.5 million who were fully vaccinated surveyed by the health ministry.
Of the total 14,500,984 fully vaccinated people surveyed, 1,445 had died of Covid-19.
Kalaiarasu said the breakthrough death rate among those who were fully vaccinated with Sinovac stood at 0.015%, followed by Pfizer at 0.005% and AstraZeneca at 0.002%.
Of the 1,445 vaccinated people who still died of Covid-19, 1,108 had received Sinovac, 323 had received Pfizer while 14 were immunised with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Meanwhile, of the 14.5 million fully vaccinated people surveyed, only 953 were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) later. Of that, 799 had been vaccinated with Sinovac, 147 with Pfizer and seven with AstraZeneca.
“The message is very clear. Those who are fully vaccinated get the maximum benefit from vaccines,” Kalaiarasu said.
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