Malaysia will start vaccinating children below 12 years old against COVID-19 next year

The Ministry of Health (MOH) has announced that it will start vaccinating children below 12 years old against COVID-19 next year. It aims to administer the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine which is still pending regulatory approval for the age group.

At the moment, Pfizer has been given conditional approval for use in children aged 12 years old and above. In a reply to Parliament, the Ministry said Pfizer is expected to submit data to the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) for evaluation and approval before it can be administered to younger children.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) has given emergency use authorisation for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to include children 5 to 11 years old. Based on their evaluation, they have found that the immune responses of children aged 5 to 11 years of age were comparable to those of individuals aged 16 to 25 years old. The vaccine was found to be 90.7% effective in preventing COVID-19 in children aged 5 to 11 years old. The US FDA also shared that the safety study which involved 3,100 children aged 5 to 11 who have received the vaccine had shown no serious side effects.

According to Malaysia’s MOH, the government is in the process of procuring the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for the group as it has a different formulation than those used for the adult population, and it is subject to approvals by NPRA and the Drug Control Authority. It added that 5.9 million children are expected to be vaccinated which requires 11.8 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

As of 11th November 2021, Malaysia has fully vaccinated 24,730,649 individuals, or 75.7% of the total population. In terms of the adult population, 22,258,551 individuals, or 95.1% have been fully vaccinated. A total of 825,497 booster shots have been administered so far.

The teen vaccination programme, covering children aged 12 to 17 years old, has already achieved a 78.5% fully vaccination rate. Besides Pfizer, Sinovac is also administered to teens who have allergies, or can’t take an mRNA vaccine.

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