MALAYSIA will start administering the China-made CoronaVac vaccine by Sinovac on Thursday, said Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

The coordinating minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme said he will be the first Malaysian to be inoculated with the vaccine.

“We will start administering the Sinovac vaccine at the Rembau Hospital at 1.30pm on March 18. I will be the first person to receive the vaccine,” he said at the weekly press conference on the vaccination programme.

Malaysia will receive 100,000 doses of Sinovac vaccines today and another 100,000 doses on March 22.

Apart from that, it will also be taking delivery of another 83,070 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine today.

This will be followed by another 124,020 doses on March 22 and 125,190 on March 29. This will complete the delivery of 1,000,350 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines by the first quarter of the year.

Meanwhile, Khairy said the vaccines will be administered on a rolling basis instead of waiting for a new batch of vaccine to arrive.

“Pfizer seems to be efficient up to now as far as delivery is concerned. They have delivered when they have promised to deliver. That has given us the assurance to proceed with a rolling basis, that means we don’t have to wait for two doses to be here in order to start giving doses to someone who has not received the vaccine,” he said. – March 15, 2021.