MALAYSIA will take delivery of the vaccine developed by China-based CanSino Biologics Inc in July, said Khairy Jamaluddin.

“I am negotiating the delivery schedule with the company CanSino.

“Perhaps we will receive the first consignment in mid-July and we will allocate it to the respective states,” the coordinating minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme said in a joint press conference with Pahang Menteri Besar Wan Rosdy Wan Ismail.

He said the single-shot Convidecia Recombinant Novel Coronavirus Vaccine (Adenovirus Type 5 Vector) vaccine will be administered to those in rural areas.

“We will allocate the CanSino vaccines to Sabah, Sarawak, Pahang and states which have interiors and rural areas which are not easily accessible.”

Khairy said the government is also rearranging the vaccine delivery schedule to East Coast states with the monsoon season in mind.

“Hopefully we are finished (by the monsoon season). If we are not finished, then we will have to see what is the strategy to administer the vaccines during the monsoon,” he said.

On June 15, the Drug Control Authority (DCA) gave a conditional approval for the CanSino and the Janssen vaccine produced by Johnson and Johnson (J&J) for emergency use.

A spokesperson for J&J told The Malaysian Insight that the supplies of the vaccine will be delivered via the Covax facility.

“The J&J single-dose vaccine was granted conditional registration for emergency use by Malaysia’s DCA, in order for it to be supplied by the Covax facility in Malaysia,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Covax or the Covid-19 vaccine global access platform is coordinated by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and the World Health Organisation.

Malaysia is currently administering the vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-Oxford and Sinovac in its vaccine programme. – June 18, 2021.