KUALA LUMPUR, 8 December 2020: Malaysia should receive its first batch of the Covid-19 vaccine during the first quarter of 2021, according to the latest Covid-19 update posted by Tourism Malaysia.
The vaccination campaign will prioritise high-risk groups who are more susceptible to Covid-19 infection, such as frontline medical and care workers, the elderly, and patients with non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases.
Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said, about 30% of the Malaysian population will be eligible for the free vaccine after the government has signed two agreement on vaccine procurement. Foreigners resident or visiting the country, however, will be charged at a rate determined by the Health Ministry.
According to Muhyiddin, through preliminary purchasing agreement with pharmaceutical company Pfizer, 12.8 million doses of the vaccine will be purchased to immunise 20% or 6.4 million Malaysians.
The authorities have also inked an agreement with the vaccine development platform COVAX Facility to secure access to the COVID-19 vaccine for another 10% of the country’s population.
The government has stressed that vaccination is not compulsory. Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Khairy Jamaluddin said, the preliminary data of the Pfizer vaccine showed it has a 95% efficacy after undergoing the third phase of clinical trials involving 43,998 people worldwide, age between 12 to 85 years old. Last week the first batch of the Pfizer vaccines arrived in the UK, the first country to grant approval.
In Malaysia, the vaccine must first pass strict conditions set by the Health Ministry’s National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA).
Meanwhile, Covid-19 updates focused on the increase in positive cases among foreign workers, mainly in factories as well as construction sites. A new directive requires that all foreign workers must undergo mandatory Covid-19 screening using RTK Antigen in stages, starting this week in Kuala Lumpur and then in Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Penang and Labuan. The cost of the test will be borne by their respective employers.
Malaysia also recorded 72,694 cumulative cases of which 11,039 were active as of 5 December. Recovered cases stood at 61,2783. The incidence rate per 100,000 population is 224.60, and the death toll reached 382.
