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Malaysia’s COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Committee says Malaysians will be given priority to receive vaccination doses.
FILE PHOTO: Foreign workers line up to get tested for coronavirus (COVID-19) outside a clinic in Kajang, Malaysia, October 26, 2020. REUTERS / Lim Huey Teng
KUALA LUMPUR: Foreigners living in Malaysia will receive the COVID-19 vaccine for free when Putrajaya launches its immunization program from the end of February.
In a press release published on Thursday (February 11), Malaysia’s COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Committee emphasized that Malaysians will be given priority to receive vaccination doses, but maintained that the decision to including foreigners is key to the success of the program.
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had previously announced in November that COVID-19 vaccines will be given free of charge to Malaysians, adding that the government has no plans to make vaccination mandatory.
The latest statement added that the Cabinet approved the decision after considering factors such as how foreign workers cover a large portion of COVID-19 cases in existing COVID-19 clusters in Malaysia, especially those in the construction, agriculture sectors. and manufacturing.
The statement highlighted that infections as a result of groups of foreign workers have “high costs” due to treatment and quarantine procedures.
Furthermore, the committee added that a COVID-19-free environment will only be achieved when as many residents of Malaysia as possible are vaccinated.
“Foreign workers have become part of our community and also contribute to the country’s economy,” the statement said.
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The committee also noted that some countries have provided free vaccination for Malaysians residing there.
“During this pandemic period, vaccine distribution is a human movement,” the statement added.
The committee added that the decision to offer the vaccination to foreigners free of charge was also made because the number of doses obtained by the Malaysian government exceeds the number of Malaysian citizens who are qualified to be vaccinated.
“It is also in line with the government’s position to administer the vaccine to as many of the Malaysian population as possible to achieve herd immunity and overcome the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement said.
The committee noted that the vaccination schedule for foreigners will be announced in the future.
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Last week, Health Minister Adham Baba said Malaysia would receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines a week earlier, before the first phase of the national COVID-19 immunization plan begins on February 26.
He said the vaccine must arrive earlier so that the 7,000 people in charge of providing the vaccine can get vaccinated first, according to Bernama.
“We need to prioritize those who are assigned to provide the vaccine, and 7,000 vaccinators have been chosen for the first vaccines,” he said.
The director general of the Ministry of Health, Noor Hisham Abdullah, previously said that once delivered, the first batch of vaccines will be distributed across the country over a period of one to two weeks.
In November, Malaysia said it had agreed to buy 12.8 million doses of the vaccine jointly developed by US drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
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.
On Wednesday, Malaysia reported 3,288 new cases of COVID-19, most of which occurred in the Klang Valley. The total number of cases stood at 251,604, with 923 deaths.
