THE Health Ministry will wait for clinical trial reports before committing to the latest coronavirus vaccine, said Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

The director-general of health said the ministry hopes to get the phase 3 clinical trial report of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE to analyse its safety and efficacy. 

“We are looking into the vaccine but to date, although there are 11 vaccines that are in phase 3 of clinical trials, we have yet to read the reports.

“We hope that we get the report to analyse the safety and efficacy of the vaccine,” he said at a press conference in Putrajaya today. 

Yesterday, Pfizer Inc said the vaccine is more than 90% effective based on initial trial results.

Noor Hisham also said there will be logistical and storage challenges that need to be overcome if Malaysia decides to procure the vaccine.

“Obviously there are a lot of logistical issues and there is actually a cold chain (series of actions and equipment applied to maintain a product).

“We need to provide all that infrastructure and low temperature devices before we can procure the vaccine,” he said, referring to reports that the vaccine needs to be kept at -70°C or below.

Despite being hopeful, Noor Hisham said he is still in dilemma about the Covid-19 vaccine due to a previous dengue vaccine, which proved to have a safety issue in its phase 3 of clinical trials. – November 10, 2020.