KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force will continue to be co-chaired by the Health and Science, Technology and Innovation Ministers.
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said this in a Tweet today, adding that the ministries would run the national immunisation programme together until the end of October, before the duties are fully handed to the Health Ministry.
Khairy also shared a picture of him with his predecessor Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba who now heads the Science, Technology and Innovation portfolio.
On Saturday Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said all vaccination-related programmes and health strategies related to Covid-19 would be handled by the Health Ministry (MoH) through Khairy.
Ismail Sabri said that Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry (Mosti) would instead focus on research and development (R&D) to produce Covid-19 vaccines.
He explained that it was quite difficult for the related tasks to be divided among two ministries and their designated human resources due to differences in views and other factors.
"Mosti will focus on producing its own vaccines because if Thailand can announce it is producing its own vaccine, then Malaysia can also do the same because Covid-19 will be an endemic and will be around like dengue, which means vaccines are still needed.
"(And) that is why Mosti has to focus (on this) so we don't depend on foreign countries because when the number of cases increases and we still depend (on vaccine supply) from abroad, it affects the supply. If we can produce our own vaccines, the situation will be different," he said.