PUTRAJAYA, Dec 1 — The Ministry of Health (MOH) is expected to receive the first report of phase three clinical study on Covid-19 vaccine next week, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
He said the report would be provided by one of the 10 vaccine research companies which had negotiated with Malaysia before this.
He explained that Malaysia conducted initial negotiations with 10 of the 12 Covid-19 vaccine companies to carry out the third phase research to ensure the country obtain supply after the vaccine has been registered.
“Malaysia is worried that when the vaccine has been registered, the supply would not be sufficient as all countries want the vaccine at the same time.
“This (negotiation) is a proactive move by MOH after learning that from the second wave of Covid-19,” he said at a media conference on Covid-19 development at MOH here yesterday.
Dr Noor Hisham said in the second wave of Covid-19 in the country, Malaysia faced difficulties in acquiring personal protection equipment (PPE) and ventilators as all countries were also looking for the items at the same time.
He said such a situation would slow down Malaysia acquiring Covid-19 vaccine and it was important for Malaysia to start negotiation early to obtain the vaccine.
“The condition set by Malaysia in the negotiation is that the vaccine has to be registered with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Division. The agreement would be cancelled if the vaccine was not registered,” he said.
In this regard, Dr Noor Hisham said so far a total of 23,480 sporadic cases were recorded in the country or equivalent to 35.7 per cent from the overall cases reported while 64.3 per cent were cases linked to specific clusters.
“There are also sporadic cases we detected earlier and later identified the cluster we can link to,” he said.
In this regard, he said an increase in sporadic case figure showed the virus is already in the community.
“This is a what we are worried about, so we have to use public health methods to contain Covid-19 infection in the country and that is why we have a standard operating procedure (SOP) to prevent ourselves from being infected,” he said.
— Bernama
