Preparations made to receive Pfizer vaccine, health personnel to undergo training

BINTULU: Preparations have been made to receive the PfizerBioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, scheduled to arrive in midFebruary for distribution to clinics and hospitals nationwide, said Deputy Health Minister Datuk Aaron Ago Dagang.

He said in preparation, training to be given to health personnel from Feb 2 until Feb 5, on how to handle the vaccine.

The government, he said, had applied for six types of vaccines but will only be receiving the one from Pfizer at the moment.

“The vaccine must be approved by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) of the Ministry of Health. Only registered vaccines will be accepted in Malaysia and after that, approval from NPRA is needed for each group.

“Malaysians have nothing to worry about as all products that we will be receiving have already been registered,” he told a press conference before witnessing the dry run of the Covid-19 vaccine at Bintulu Hospital yesterday.

He added Malaysia would be receiving the 12.8 million doses acquired from Pfizer in stages because countries around the world are also using the same vaccine.

He said according to the national vaccination plan, priority will go to the first group which are frontliners in the Health Ministry, military and police – consisting of about 500,000 doses – followed by the second group which comprises those classified as high-risk.

“The third group is the members of the public aged 18 years and above. Vaccines will not be given to those below 18 years old,” he said, adding that the government has allocated RM3 billion to carry out the vaccination.

On yesterday’s dry run, Aaron said the slowest delivery method which is by road from Kuching, was selected for the exercise.

“Basically we can use air travel but we decided to use road transportation for our dry run so we can monitor and ensure there are no weaknesses in the process and outcome,” he said.

He said that the vaccines will be delivered by the suppliers.

He also said that based on the agreement between the government and Pfizer, the deliver process will be handled by the pharmaceutical company who will be choosing its preferred delivery company.

“The government’s responsibility only starts when the vaccine reaches the government facilities. This is part of the terms in our agreement, that is why we need to do this dry run.”

The deputy minister further explained that Belaga, which was the chosen location for Friday’s dry run, was selected as it was considered the farthest place in the interior in Sarawak, adding that there would be no further dry runs carried out in rural areas.

“The important thing is that the vaccine arrived at the required temperature of negative 75 degrees Celsius.

“Yesterday (Friday), it reached negative 90 degrees Celsius. We succeeded and this is what we want to know,” he said.