Enough vaccines for vaccination target by October
Malaysia expects to receive enough Covid-19 vaccines from its suppliers to vaccinate 80 percent of its population in October.
This is according to a chart shared by the Special Committee on Ensuring Covid-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV) today...
Malaysia expects to receive enough Covid-19 vaccines from its suppliers to vaccinate 80 percent of its population in October.
This is according to a chart shared by the Special Committee on Ensuring Covid-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV) today.
The chart also shows Malaysia would receive relatively few vaccine doses until April, and then deliveries would pick up in June and July before slowing down slightly afterwards.
By the end of the year, the country is scheduled to receive enough vaccines for over 30 million people.
For comparison, Malaysia has a population of about 32 million, and only adults are eligible to be vaccinated pending further studies to ensure the vaccines are safe and effective in children and teenagers.
The country reached its milestone of administering its one-millionth dose yesterday, including 409,784 people that have completed their vaccination.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Program originally aims to vaccinate 23.6 million people by February next year, although its coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin had indicated that this goal could be reached by the end of this year if vaccine deliveries are made on schedule.
This is contingent on the vaccines booked by the government receiving regulatory approval from the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency and Drug Control Authority.
Thus far, only vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, and Sinovac have been approved. Those still pending are vaccines developed by the Gamaleya Institute and CanSino Biologics.
The government is reviewing the AstraZeneca vaccine after the European Medicines Agency found that it is linked with the incidence of “very rare” blood clots, and a decision is expected next week.
More recently, however, Khairy said the current bottleneck in vaccinating people sooner is the shortage of vaccines.
Once this is resolved through increased deliveries, the next bottleneck is the lack of people who have registered for vaccination in the first place.
The chart issued by JKJAV shows vaccine supply exceeding the number of people who have expressed interest in being vaccinated in June, as Khariy previously disclosed.
He said people may be adopting a 'wait-and-see' approach while deciding whether to sign up for vaccination.
If registration rates remain low, however, the government will decide in September whether to resort to mandatory vaccination.
As of yesterday, only 8,602,156 people have signed up for vaccination, or 35.5 percent of the population eligible for vaccination.
You can track the progress of Malaysia’s vaccination program as well as its Covid-19 situation through Malaysiakini’s tracker here.
