Malaysia has announced that it will begin administering the Sinovac vaccines on Thursday, 18th March 2021 as part of its national COVID-19 immunisation programe. As promised earlier, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, Khairy Jamaluddin, will be the first to receive the jab.
The Sinovac vaccines have received conditional approval by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA). Malaysia is receiving 100,000 doses of finished Sinovac vaccines from China today, which is different from the earlier bulk vaccines which will undergo a local fill and finish process. Khairy will receive the Sinovac vaccine jab at his constituency at Hospital Rembau.
Sinovac is the second vaccine to be administered in Malaysia after Pfizer. Similar to Pfizer, it require two doses but it has a shorter interval of 14-days instead of 21-days on Pfizer.
Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine is developed based on inactivated virus, which is the traditional way of making most vaccines. Another advantage of CoronaVac is that it doesn’t have extreme refrigeration requirements like Pfizer and it can be stored between 2-8°C.
The Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine has been certified halal by Indonesian authorities. Apart from Indonesia, it also has been used in Turkey, Brazil and Thailand.
As of 12am today, a total of 5,534,114 people have registered for the national COVID-19 immunisation program, which is 22.8% of the targetted population. A total of 301,669 people have received their first dose of the vaccine as of 14th March 2021 at 11.59pm.
The first batch of people who have received their first Pfizer vaccine jab on 24th February are due to get their second dose on 17th March 2021. This include the Prime Minister and the Health Director-General.
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