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KUALA LUMPUR, February 24: The vaccine supply would be distributed to each Vaccine Administration Center (VAC) in stages according to the number of vaccine recipients and according to the suitability of time.
The director of the Division of Pharmaceutical Development and Practice of the Ministry of Health, A’tia Hashim, said that the procedure was to guarantee and maintain the quality of the Comirnaty vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech, which is sensitive to temperature and has a certain shelf life.
He said the Comirnaty vaccine should be stored in an ultra-low temperature freezer (ULTF) with a temperature range of -90 ° C to -60 ° C.
“When shipped or collected by VAC, the vaccine will be transferred to a cold box with a storage temperature of 2 ° C to 8 ° C and then placed in a top-loading freezer with the same storage temperature upon arrival at the center .
“Community vaccine stored in a cold box between 2 ° C and 8 ° C has a shelf life of up to five days or 120 hours,” she told Bernama when contacted.
The National COVID-19 Immunization Program officially began today with Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as the first person in the country to receive the vaccine.
Implementation of the three-phase program, which began two days earlier than originally scheduled on February 26, will see more than 500,000 front-line people receive the vaccine during the first phase that will last until April.
In addition to Muhyiddin, Health Director General Tan Sri, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, and four other staff from the Ministry of Health are also scheduled to receive the vaccine today.
Commenting further, A’tia said the process of shipping the vaccine to VAC only involves the use of cold boxes because ULTF is static and is only placed in designated vaccine storage centers.
He said that the movement of the vaccine supply is carried out according to the plan or schedule of each VAC, in addition to using the vehicles provided by the respective VAC.
A’tia said the same distribution procedure also applies to the supply of vaccines to rural or remote areas.
“If there is a need for vaccine delivery using vehicles other than ground transportation (for rural areas), the VAC will plan (helicopter service),” he said.
On the latest status of the Sinovac vaccine, which is expected to arrive on February 27, he said that the vaccine is still under evaluation by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA). Called
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