KLUANG – The government will be concluding an agreement with AstraZeneca of United Kingdom on Monday to purchase COVID-19 vaccine to meet the immunisation needs of 20 per cent of the people in the country.
Health Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba said this is the third agreement after the government signed with COVAX to buy 10 per cent of its vaccine need and with Pfizer to cover 20 per cent of Malaysia’s requirement last month.
‘On the overall, we will be purchasing vaccine for 50 per cent of the people. We will try to get all vaccine supplies in the first quarter next year,” he told reporters after a symbolic handing over of Aerosol Intubation Box contribution by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) to the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Simpang Renggam near here today.
Also present was UTM deputy vice chancellor (Research and Innovation) Prof Datuk Dr Ahmad Fauzi Ismail.
Dr Adham said at the same time, the government has to increase procurement for another 20 per cent vaccine to meet the need of 70 per cent of the people.
He said the government would look into attracting vaccine suppliers to meet the need of the country.
“What is important is that companies which gave quick access to their vaccines must ensure they are safe, and of quality. Must also receive approval from the producing country as well as approval from MOH’s National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA).
“If it is concluded, we can vaccinate the first Malaysians comprising frontliners in early 2021,” he said.
The media today reported that the first batch of vaccine would be arriving in February 2021 with supplies continuing until the end of 2021.
On Nov 24 Nov, Malaysia announced that it would acquiring its initial supply for 12.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer to meet 20 per cent of its immunisation needs or 6.4 million people for free.
Background
On November 23, the world heard how the UK’s Covid vaccine – from AstraZeneca and Oxford University – was highly effective in advanced trials.
It gave hope of another new jab to fight the pandemic that should be cheaper and easier to distribute than the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines that announced similarly impressive results just days before.
But after the jubilation, some negative press has followed.
On November 27, multiple news outlets in the UK and US reported that there were questions over the data. They weren’t about safety, but rather how effective the jab is.
The questions centre around efficacy levels.
Three were reported from the trial – an overall efficacy of 70%, a lower one of 62% and a high of 90%.
That’s because different doses of the vaccine were used in the trial. Some volunteers were given shots half the planned strength. Yet that “wrong” dose turned out to be a winner.
Some of the shots were weaker than they were designed to be, containing much less of the ingredient that is meant to give a person immunity.
The jab is actually two shots, with the second given a month after the first as a booster.
While most of the volunteers in the trial got the correct dose for both of their two shots, some didn’t.
Regulators were told about it early on and they agreed that the trial could continue and more volunteers could be immunised.
It had no effect on vaccine safety.
Results
About 3,000 participants were given the half dose and then a full dose four weeks later, and this regime appeared to provide the most protection or efficacy in the trial – around 90%.
In the larger group of nearly 9,000 volunteers, who were given two full doses also four weeks apart, efficacy was 62%.
AstraZeneca reported these percentages and also said that its vaccine was, on average, 70% effective at preventing Covid-19 illness. The figures left some experts scratching their head.
Although the dosing was different, the rest of the study didn’t change from the original plan.
Prof Peter Openshaw, an expert at Imperial College London, says the take home message should be that we have three very promising Covid vaccines that could soon become available to help save lives.
