‘Diversifying vaccine portfolio expedited country’s rate of vaccination’
PUTRAJAYA: The government’s decision in diversifying the vaccine portfolio under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) has succeeded in raising the country’s rate of vaccination which propelled Malaysia as among the fastest in the world, said PICK Coordinating Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.
According to him, the national vaccination rate is high if compared with South Korea and Australia as well as other neighbouring countries, with the highest daily vaccine shots administered at 507,050 doses on July 21.
“Earlier some said Malaysia was slow in joining Covax and why didn’t we put all (portfolio of vaccines) under Covax. So far, we have only received 828,000 doses of vaccine compared to a total of 6.4 million doses allocated under Covax.
“If I had placed the full portfolio of vaccines under Covax...we will face difficulties, so this is the reason why we diversify the procurement of vaccines,” he said in a virtual interview recently.
The portfolio of Covid-19 vaccines used under PICK were Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac and CanSino which were procured from the manufacturers, while AstraZeneca was acquired from United Nations vaccine facility, Covax as well as the manufacturer.
As at July 21, Malaysia had received 21,556,750 doses of vaccines comprising PfizerBioNTech, AstraZeneca as well as Sinovac for usage under PICK and from the total, 16,024,916 doses had been dispensed throughout the country, he said.
“I hope we could maintain the existing momentum for us to achieve the target of vaccinating all adults in Malaysia by October or November,” he said.