The Health Ministry is still in the midst of procuring the Covid-19 bivalent vaccines, said minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa.
She said it is currently waiting for the approval of the Attorney-General’s Chambers.
“We have actually discussed with Pfizer (as) they are the one marketing the bivalent.
“The agreement is still in process, we are waiting for (the) AGC,” she told Malaysiakini at the launch of CRM Trial Connect 2023 in Kuala Lumpur today.
The approval of the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) is a standard process in Covid-19 vaccine procurement.
However, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim claimed in February that ministers from previous administrations had signed off on previous vaccine procurements without the express approval of the AGC.
Promises of the bivalent vaccine arriving in Malaysia were made as early as January this year, when former health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that it would likely arrive later that month.
However, Zaliha was quoted in March saying that the talks with Pfizer regarding the procurement of the bivalent vaccine were still ongoing.
The Health Minister remained mum to a question regarding the vaccines’ procurement delay.
Bivalent vaccines were created by Pfizer to strengthen the Comirnaty (Covid-19) vaccine formulation.
They contain components of the original Covid-19 strain that was first detected in Wuhan, China, in 2020 along with the more recent Omicron subvariants.
The previous formulation was a monovalent vaccine that only had the Wuhan strain.
The Drug Control Authority (DCA) granted conditional approval for Pfizer’s updated vaccines as it was reported that the new booster improved protection against the new subvariants. - Mkini
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