PUTRAJAYA: The country will receive sufficient Covid-19 vaccine supply for its population and is ready to procure more through negotiations with pharmaceutical companies, if necessary.
Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said, for instance, the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccines would be enough to cover 82.2 per cent of Malaysians.
However, the government would negotiate with Pfizer to increase the vaccine supply from 12.8 million doses to 25.6 million.
"If it is necessary, I will negotiate with Pfizer to add on 20 per cent doses for another 20 per cent or 12.8 million Malaysians.
"This is because of only two brands of vaccines that have been approved by the United States, namely Pfizer and Moderna.
"The Health Ministry's National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) is currently in the process of approving them," said Khairy, who is also the Special Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Committee (JKJAV) co-chairman.
Khairy said Malaysia was negotiating terms on getting an additional supply of vaccines with US biotech firm Moderna and pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.
He said the vaccines would only cover the adult population of the country and would not be recommended for children.
"From there, you can immediately subtract about 20 to 30 per cent of the population.
"This means the vaccine is enough for those eligible," he said.
Khairy also said Pfizer was analysing the latest Covid-19 virus strain which had plagued the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands.
He said the American-based pharmaceutical company would need at least six weeks to ensure the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine against the new strain.
"As of now, they are performing tests on the current vaccine against the new Covid-19 mutation.
"If it does not work, they will need six weeks to tweak for the vaccines to be highly effective against the virus," he said.
Khairy said Pfizer has submitted a research dossier containing information on its third clinical test on its vaccine.
He also expected British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to submit a similar document to the Health Ministry's National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) following a signed deal with Malaysia recently.
"China-based Sinovac will also meet with the NPRA at end of the month while CanSinoBIO had finalised its preliminary discussions with the government regulatory body.
"The government hopes to obtain the research dossier from the Gamelaya Natinao Centre from Russia which produced the Covid-19 vaccine namely, the Sputnik-V by end of the month," he said.
In November, it was reported that developers had claimed its Sputnik V vaccine was 95 per cent effective based on a second interim analysis of clinical trial data.