KUALA LUMPUR – The government appears to have cooled its interest in joining the Covax initiative after having initially expressed its willingness to be part of the project.
Covax is a vaccine allocation plan involving the World Health Organisation (WHO) that aims to disperse Covid-19 vaccines equitably to countries and communities around the world which need it the most.
Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Minister (Mosti) Khairy Jamaluddin expressed reservations on Malaysia's participation in the global initiative, saying that the government was in discussion with other pharmaceutical companies around the world without needing to be part of Covax.
"We are still discussing some matters with Covax. The facility is for early purchase, so the procurement model is quite extraordinary. We pay for something that still doesn't exist," he said.
He said that the data from several Covid-19 vaccine clinical tests would be analysed at the end of this year.
Khairy added, Mosti was currently discussing with the Health Ministry, Finance Ministry and the Attorney General's Chamber on the legal implication and procurement model for the vaccine.
On September 19, Mosti announced that it would be part of the Covax initiative which involved 172 countries.
The Covax initiative is premised on the recognition that earliest approved vaccines would be in short supply, and the initial target would be to deliver it to 3% of the population of the participating nations before gradually increasing that number to 20%.
A calculation by the health news portal Code Blue found that "Covax's all-inclusive price of US$10.55 (RM43.91) per dose of Covid-19 vaccines is nearly seven times cheaper than China-owned Sinopharm's experimental coronavirus vaccine at US$72.50 per dose". – The Vibes, September 29, 2020
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