THE government should not waste time testing vaccines that have already been proven effective in other countries, said Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

“All our efforts should go towards vaccinating as many people as possible.

“There are many vaccines that are being used by other countries. And they have been proven to work. Hence there is no point for us to test them anymore,” said the former prime minister in a video message today.

He said these vaccines were being used in Britain and the United States and infection rates in both countries have declined.

“We must have an aggressive campaign to vaccinate as many as possible.”

The Langkawi MP said that although the UK has not vaccinated 80% of their population, its infection rates have already come down, proving that the vaccines work.

He said there may be some disputes between Europe and China on the use of the Sinovac vaccine.

“But again China has proven their vaccine works as although they have 1.4 billion people their infection rates are low and their economy is doing better.”

Meanwhile, Dr Mahathir also urged the government to be more aggressive in its vaccination programme and go to rural areas to vaccinate people.

“Don’t wait for people to come as there are many old and weak people in the rural areas that cannot come to the towns to get vaccinated.

“Just assign one doctor per team and go to these people to vaccinate them,” said the 95-year-old.

Malaysia is at present administering the Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, while waiting for the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Division (NPRA) to approve China’s CanSinoBIO and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines.

The country’s vaccination rate has been slow largely due to lack of supply as well as low registration among the public.

The latest figures show that 12,414,513 people have registered for vaccination while 2,002,345 have been vaccinated with at least one dose. – June 2, 2021.