AstraZeneca vaccines arrive in Malaysia

 

The AstraZeneca vaccine has arrived in Malaysia two months ahead of schedule.

This was confirmed by Health Minister Dr Adham Baba, who said 268,800 doses of the vaccines arrived last night.

AstraZeneca is the third Covid-19 vaccine to arrive in the country after Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinovac.

The administering of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinovac vaccines have generally proceeded smoothly in Malaysia. However, the AstraZeneca vaccine had been in the news even before its arrival.

European Union and UK regulators had investigated rare cases of blood clots involving the AstraZeneca vaccine.

They concluded that while there was a possible link of rare blood clots, the benefits of the vaccine still outweighed the risk of a Covid-19 infection for the vast majority of the people.

Adham, when contacted, said the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) had approved the vaccine.

"The safety, quality and efficacy have all been considered in the approval by NPRA," he told Malaysiakini.

He said Health Ministry experts would issue a statement on the AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday.

Adham explained that the AstraZeneca vaccine was procured through Covax, an initiative linked to the World Health Organization to ensure global access to Covid-19 vaccines.

He said this batch of vaccine was from AstranaZeneca's facility in South Korea.

"The delivery was handled by Unicef (United Nations Children's Fund)," he said.

On April 6, Adham had said the government would use the AstraZeneca vaccine as clinical data pointed to "benefits rather than harms".

On April 9, Khairy clarified that that position was before the European Medicines Agency (EMA) report on possible links of rare blood clots, and the matter would be deliberated on again.

"In this case, before the announcement (by EMA), our stance is as stated by the Health Minister Dr Adham Baba two days ago that we will proceed with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

"However, I think the safest approach is to refer back to JKJAV (the Special Committee on Covid-19 Vaccine Supply) based on the recent information that we have obtained from the EMA," Khairy had said.

At that time, Putrajaya was expecting the AstraZeneca vaccine to arrive in May. Before that, the expected arrival was in June.

Both Khairy and Adham co-chairs JKJAV, which oversees the national immunisation programme against Covid-19, the biggest of its kind in the country's history. - Mkini