KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia said on Saturday it had secured its coronavirus vaccine from AstraZeneca PLC.
The AstraZeneca agreement, to be signed on Monday, will allow the immunization of about 20% of Malaysia’s population of 32 million, similar to the agreement with the American giant Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech SE, said Health Minister Adham Baba.
The Southeast Asian nation saw an increase in the number of cases since September, with almost 92,000 new coronavirus cases and 433 COVID-19 deaths.
Malaysia expects to receive enough vaccines to inoculate 10% of the population through the global COVAX facility, backed by the World Health Organization, he said in a statement. The government is working to get more offers to expand inoculation to 70 percent of the population, Adham said.
“The important thing is that the company can give us quick access to their vaccine and that it must be safe, effective and of high quality,” he said.
The government expects to receive the first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses in February, Bernama said. Malaysia said last month that it had agreed to buy 12.8 million doses of the vaccine, becoming the first country in Southeast Asia to reach an agreement with the US drug maker.
Under the Pfizer agreement, Malaysia will receive 1 million doses in the first quarter of 2021 and 1.7 million, 5.8 million and 4.3 million doses in the following quarters.
Pfizer-BioNTech has supply deals with several countries, including the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. They expect to produce up to 50 million doses of vaccines in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
More than 150 potential vaccines are being developed and tested globally to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, with 48 in human studies, says the WHO.
Reporting by Joseph Sipalan; Edited by Shri Navaratnam and William Mallard