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Malaysia in Vaccine Pact with Pfizer
US company will supply enough doses for 6.4 million people
A health worker collects a swab sample from a Top Glove employee outside a shelter under an improved lockdown in Klang, where hundreds of workers have been infected. (Reuters photo)
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia on Friday signed an agreement with Pfizer Inc to obtain its Covid-19 vaccine for 20% of the population while fighting the resurgence of coronavirus infections.
The 12.8 million dose deal to inoculate 6.4 million people depends on Pfizer’s vaccine being approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Malaysia’s drug regulator, Prime Minister Muhyiddin said. Yassin at a televised conference.
The announcement came on the same day that Thailand and the Philippines signed agreements to secure the supply of vaccines from the Swedish and British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
New daily infections in Malaysia hit a record 2,188 on Tuesday, of which more than half come from a group linked to the workers’ dormitories of Top Glove Corp, the world’s largest manufacturer of surgical gloves, and threaten the $ economy. 365 billion just when it’s showing signs of improvement. The country has recorded 60,750 infections and 370 deaths since the pandemic began.
The fight to stop the spread of the virus has put Malaysia behind Indonesia in Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking, which measures countries’ success in fighting the virus with minimal social and business disruption. The latter is ranked 19, 10 places above Malaysia, despite being the focus of Southeast Asia viruses.
Indonesia has orders from at least four vaccine suppliers, including Sinovac Biotech and AstraZeneca, whose vaccines are in advanced stage trials. That access puts the country second in Asia after China and on par with Japan and India in securing long-awaited immunizations, data compiled by Bloomberg shows.
Pfizer announced earlier this month that its vaccine was 95% effective in preventing the disease. The US pharmaceutical company will deliver one million doses to Malaysia in the first quarter of 2021, 1.7 million in the second, 5.8 million in the third and 4.3 million in the last three months of the year, Muhiyddin said.
Malaysia also signed an agreement with the WHO-backed Covax program to provide vaccines to 10% of the population, the Malaysiakini news site reported on Friday, citing the prime minister.
The vaccines will be available to locals free of charge, while foreigners residing in Malaysia will have to pay for them, according to the report. A detailed vaccine implementation plan will be announced in January.
Malaysia will carry out its first Covid-19 vaccine trial in December as part of a government-to-government agreement with China, the prime minister said. It will be a phase III trial on a candidate vaccine developed by the Institute of Medical Biology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.
