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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is expected to receive the first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines on February 26, a senior health official said on Monday (February 1).
In November, Malaysia announced that it had agreed to buy 12.8 million doses of the vaccine, jointly developed by US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Under the agreement, the pharmaceutical giant will deliver the first million doses in the first quarter of 2021, with 1.7 million, 5.8 million and 4.3 million doses in the following quarters.
Once delivered, the first batch of vaccines will be distributed across the country over a period of one to two weeks, Health Director General Noor Hisham Abdullah said at the end of a meeting of the COVID-19 Emergency Management Technical Committee.
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In January, Malaysia signed a second agreement with Pfizer to secure an additional 12.2 million doses of its vaccine.
The Southeast Asian nation also signed agreements to secure 18.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines produced by Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute and China’s Sinovac.
MORE THAN 4,000 NEW CASES
Malaysia has been struggling with a sharp increase in coronavirus cases in recent weeks, as the cumulative total reached 219,173 cases and 770 deaths as of Monday.
There were 4,214 new COVID-19 cases and 10 new deaths reported Monday, with 4,280 patients discharged after recovering from the disease.
Most of the cases were in Selangor and Johor, each with more than 1,000 new infections. Kuala Lumpur added 702 cases to its account.
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All other regions of Malaysia reported new cases, except Perlis.
Specific workplace controls, close contact controls and high-risk groups have been carried out on a large scale in several states.
PEAK IN CASES DUE TO LATE REPORTS
In a statement Sunday, Dr. Noor Hisham said that the sharp increase in the number of daily cases, which exceeded 5,000 for three consecutive days, was due to late notification of cases to authorities. Among those that were reported late are cases detected in 2020.
“What we see are private labs, when they get the results, they have to include them in the public health information system, so if there is a delay in data entry, we will receive it late,” said Dr. Noor Hisham. Monday.
He expressed hope that the late notification would be resolved in a week, and said private clinics and hospitals should be able to report positive cases as soon as possible or before noon every day.
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Dr. Noor Hisham said 141 volunteers have received injections in phase 3 clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine developed and sponsored by the China Institute of Medical Biology, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.
They were among 3,000 volunteers aged 18 and over selected for the trials.
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