Malaysia to start COVID-19 vaccination earlier on Wednesday, Muhyiddin and Dr Noor Hisham are first recipients

The first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines has arrived at KLIA just in time for Malaysia’s National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme. Originally scheduled to begin on Friday, 26th February, the Special Committee for ensuring access to COVID-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV) has announced that the immunisation plan will begin earlier on Wednesday, 24th February 2021.

As confirmed earlier, the Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin will be the first to receive the jab and he will joined by Health Director-General Dr Noor Hisham on Wednesday. 500,000 frontliners which include healthcare workers, police, RELA and armed forces, will be prioritised under Phase 1 and it is scheduled to be completed by April 2021.

A total of 312,390 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines have arrived in Kuala Lumpur at 10am this morning on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH604 operated by MASKargo. The Airbus A330 passenger aircraft (9M-MTE) had departed from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore at 6.13am this morning and left Changi Airport at 9.23am. The vaccines came from Puurs, Belgium and had made a transit to Leipzig Halle Airport before arriving at Singapore, the distribution point for Asia Pacific.

There are a total of 6 vaccine storage facilities in Selangor, 4 in Johor, 3 in Kuala Lumpur, 2 in Penang and 1 in Putrajaya. The vaccines are expected to arrive in Johor at 2pm and Penang at 6pm today. As revealed by Khairy during the Clubhouse panel discussion, Pfizer will send a new batch of vaccines every two weeks. By 29th March, Malaysia will receive a total of 1,000,350 doses from its manufacturing facility in Belgium.

The COVID-19 vaccinations are done voluntarily and you can register your consent from 1st March 2021. This can be done via MySejahtera, the JKJAV website, hotline number, manual registration at hospitals and through outreach programs. Malaysia aims to complete its vaccinations by February 2022.

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