Pharmaniaga: One million doses of Sinovac vaccine to arrive in March

 

COVID-19 | Malaysia is expected to receive its initial supply of one million doses of Sinovac vaccine from China in March, one month ahead of the Covid-19 vaccine agreement inked with the Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company, according to Pharmaniaga Bhd.

"We will start distributing the vaccine soon, hopefully in March. But our agreement states the distribution will commence in April. We will distribute one million doses in the first month, and subsequently, two million doses per month in the following months," Pharmaniaga group managing director Zulkarnain Md Eusope said in an online press conference today.

Under the agreement, Pharmaniaga's unit, Pharmaniaga Lifescience Sdn Bhd (PLS), will supply 14 million doses of ready-to-fill Covid-19 vaccine developed by Sivovac Life Sciences Co Ltd, and later manufacture the vaccine domestically.

Out of 14 million doses of the vaccine, Zulkarnain said, a total of 12 million doses will be used for the government's vaccination programme while the balance two million doses are likely to be sold to government-linked companies (GLCs), expatriates and economic frontliners.

"We will have an extra two million doses of vaccine. The government has asked us to look into how we can supply to the private sectors, especially the GLCs, the economic frontliners of Covid-19 and also to the expatriates and foreign workers," he said.

"We are collecting data. When we have enough of supply and after we complete the analysis, we will discuss with the government on how we distribute to the private sectors."

As of today, Sinovac vaccine is still subject to the approval of the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA).

"We submitted our application for registration with the NPRA on Jan 19 and it is currently reviewing the application. It is expected to take around three weeks to one month for the registration to be approved.

"Hopefully if everything is okay, the approval could be done by end of February or early of March," Zulkarnain said.

Zulkarnain Md Eusope

Zulkarnain is confident that his company, which embarked into halal vaccination manufacturing since 2018, has no issue in distributing the Chinese vaccines, particularly as it takes a standard refrigerator at 2-8 degrees Celsius to handle the vaccine.

"We are ever ready to distribute vaccine throughout the country, as instructed by the government and Health Ministry. We have handled these kinds of vaccines. 

"We don't have a problem to handle and distribute vaccines that require the same temperature, like Sinovac. To us, it is like a normal day-to-day operation," he added.

Zulkarnain said he hopes Malaysia will achieve herd immunity in one year from the arrival of the initial supply of the Covid-19 vaccines.

Malaysia entered into joint agreements with the World Health Organisation’s Covax facility as well as the United States-based Pfizer-BioNTech and United Kingdom’s AstraZeneca for its vaccine supply. Sinovax is also part of the Covax facility.

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

Malaysia has set to achieve herd immunity in 18 months against Covid-19, from February, after the arrival of the first batch of the initial vaccine supply. 

The country targets to inoculate 83 percent of its population, including migrant workers who are involved in Covid clusters. - Mkini