KUALA LUMPUR: The United Kingdom's contribution of 415,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines to Malaysia has been seen as a foot in the door for both countries to work together on various matters including mutual vaccine recognition and travel bubbles.
Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysia was highly appreciative of the invaluable support extended by the UK and believed that the two countries could work together on many productive endeavours to weather the storm of this pandemic towards meaningful recovery.
"On behalf of the Malaysian government, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my counterpart Dominic Raab and the government of the United Kingdom for this generous contribution to Malaysia's Covid-19 National Immunisation Programme (NIP).
"During my recent communication with him (Raab), he expressed his hope that this contribution would assist Malaysia in alleviating the prevailing pandemic situation," he said in a statement today.
The senior minister also said such a gesture would further strengthen cooperation bilaterally and at various other levels.
"This also includes collaboration on reciprocal vaccination arrangement and reciprocal travel bubble," he said, adding that such a contribution would accelerate the daily vaccination rate under NIP.
Hishammuddin also said the generosity shown was the epitome of the long-standing and strong relationship between both nations.
UK daily The Telegraph reported Raab as saying that the country was committed to providing 100 million doses from the surplus of domestic supply to the poorest and most vulnerable countries around the world.
Part of the first batch consisting of nine million AstraZeneca doses will start being sent out through the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access (Covax) facility and will be delivered to Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya and Jamaica. - NST
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