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PUTRAJAYA: Khairy Jamaluddin has defended the delay in the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines in Malaysia, after Singapore became the first country in Asia to receive delivery of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines on Monday.
The first batch of doses from Malaysia is expected to arrive in February, and Khairy, the science, technology and innovation minister, said the delay was due to cost.
“Singapore signed (a purchase agreement) a few months before us because its financial capacity is much higher, let’s put it that way,” he said at a press conference here.
“We take our time to get the best deal possible. If it’s a two-month variant, I think it’s reasonable. “
Earlier, in a tweet, Khairy said that he was ready to meet with the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to provide information on the vaccine procurement.
Responding to several Twitter users, one of whom asked how the government could vaccinate 82.8% of the population for RM2.05 billion, Khairy said he was willing to explain the exact costs to PAC if its members agree to sign. a confidentiality agreement. under the terms of the government’s agreement with Pfizer.
The government has pledged to purchase vaccines to cover 82.8% of the country’s 32 million inhabitants, and the first million doses in February will be distributed to target groups such as front-line people, the elderly, and people with non-communicable diseases. .
Noting that countries like Canada had enough supplies to vaccinate each of their citizens five times, Khairy added that high-income countries had the capacity to make “hundreds of millions” of advance purchases.
Responding to a recent Reuters article stating that the Covax facility might not be able to deliver vaccines until 2024, Khairy said that potential problems like this were the reason Malaysia wanted to have a “buffer” by creating a vaccine portfolio. from six different providers.
Apart from Pfizer’s 20% population coverage, 10% of the World Health Organization’s Covax facilities and another 10% of AstraZeneca, Malaysia is in the final stages of negotiations with Sinovac, CanSino and Gamaleya to acquire more vaccines to cover 42.8% of the population.
Khairy said Malaysia was also considering buying enough Pfizer vaccines to cover another 20% of the population.
Combined with the lack of clinical trials in children, which will put them out of the vaccination program, Khairy said Malaysia would have enough vaccines “for the entire adult population.”
Mentioning a new variant of Covid-19 in the UK linked to a recent spike in cases in the country, Khairy said that Pfizer was monitoring the effectiveness of its vaccine against the new mutation.
“If it’s not as effective, the company said it would take about six weeks to modify the vaccine. We will get that vaccine (modified). I will insist on it. “
Noting the priority list of Covid-19 vaccines, Khairy said the matter was discussed during today’s cabinet meeting, with recommendations to be made in January.
He raised the possibility that foreign prisoners and workers, especially the former, would be given higher priority, as they “had nowhere to go” if there were outbreaks in prisons.
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