Malaysia expected to receive Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine on Feb 26 - Noor Hisham

The country is expected to receive the first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines on Feb 26, said Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said that, once here, the vaccine will be distributed in stages to the states within a week or two.

Noor Hisham said this after participating in the Covid-19 emergency management technical committee meeting at the Menteri Besar Office, Wisma Darul Iman, Kuala Terengganu today.

Also present was Menteri Besar Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar.

The government was previously reported to have purchased 12.8 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines and has subsequently committed to purchasing an additional 12.2 million doses of the same vaccine.

In the meantime, he said that to date, a total of 141 volunteers have received injections in phase three clinical trials for the Covid-19 vaccine developed and sponsored by China’s Institute of Medical Biology Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (IMBCAMS).

They were among 3,000 volunteers, aged 18 and above, who were selected based on set criteria.

“We only want 3,000 volunteers but the number of applicants has exceeded, so we will make a selection,” he added.

Meanwhile, Noor Hisham also hoped that the late reporting of cases to the National Crisis Preparedness and Emergency Response Centre (CPRC), including from private facilities, would be resolved within a week.

He urged registered private facilities, such as private clinics and hospitals, to report positive cases as soon as possible or before 12 noon every day to the CPRC in their respective states.

“What we see is private laboratories, when they get the results, they have to include the results in the public health information system, so if there is a delay in entering the data, then we will receive the data late,” he said.

Yesterday Noor Hisham, in a statement, said the sharp increase in the number of daily cases, exceeding 5,000 on three consecutive days, was due to the late reporting of cases to the national CPRC, including cases detected positive from last year.

This sharp increase in cases is due to targeted workplace screening, close contact screening, and high-risk group screening conducted on a large scale in several states.

- Bernama