KUALA LUMPUR: Pharmaniaga Bhd has received requests for more than five million doses of Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine from state governments and the private sector.
This is on top of Pharmaniaga's contract to supply 12 million doses of the vaccine to the federal government.
And the company is just 500,000 doses shy of delivering the contractual 12 million doses.
Pharmaniaga had so far delivered almost 11.5 million doses of Sinovac vaccine, covering 93 per cent of the 12 million doses under its contract with the government.
Group managing director Datuk Zulkarnain Md Eusope expects to complete the 12 million doses by the third week of this month.
The company's vaccine supply was four-month ahead of completion scheduled by November this year, Zulkarnain said.
The 12 million doses could cover 18 per cent of Malaysia's population, he added.
"We expedite the vaccine supplies due to the rising Covid-19 cases," Zulkarnain said at a virtual press conference here today.
Of the total 11.5 million, 3.6 million doses of vaccines were locally produced via fill and finish and the remaining 7.9 million vaccines were the finished goods procured from China.
All vaccines were approved by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Authority (NPRA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Zulkarnain said Pharmaniaga would be ready to supply additional two million doses of Sinovac vaccines to the government, followed by state governments and the private sector after completing its major contractual obligation.
"We can start supplying vaccines to the state governments and private sector by the third week of July. We have readily available close to 3.0 million extra Sinovac vaccines after completing the 12 million doses supplies to the government.
"These extra doses of vaccine would be a direct-import from China (1.0 million doses) and locally produced via fill and finish (2.0 million doses) at our production plant in Puchong," he said.
Zulkarnain said priorities should be given to the federal government before tending to the supply for the private sector.
"We will assist the government with additional 2.0 million doses of vaccines. We expect to supply to the government before the end of July. The government has a delivery network under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for all its vaccination centres directed by the Health Ministry with daily deliveries between 300,000 and 400,000 doses," he added.
Zulkarnain said there was no supply disruption as Pharmaniaga's vaccine production was running 24 hours a day.
"We don't foresee any issue as the vaccine delivery is on schedule. However, the private sector might face logistics issues transporting the vaccine as it requires storage between 2.0 and 8.0 Celsius," he added.
Pharmaniaga needed to have a ready stock in the event the government wanted to procure the vaccine immediately, he said.
Meanwhile, Zulkarnain said the government had yet to determine the ceiling price for Pharmaniaga to sell the vaccine to the private sector.
"The cost of administering the vaccine is high as they need to have doctors and nurses, protective equipment and a safety network to dispose of materials after vaccination.
"They also need to comply with standard operating procedures. All of these administration costs need to be included," he said, adding that vaccine administrators must have a pharmaceutical Class-A licence for storage and to undertake an inoculation programme.
Since March 1 this year, Pharmaniaga has begun the fill and finish programme.
Its Puchong plant can now supply 2.0 million doses of Sinovac vaccine per month.
The company said the locally-produced vaccine boasted equal quality to the one manufactured at Sinovac Biotech Ltd's factory in Beijing.
"We have the fill and finish operationalise 24-hour. Up to date, we have locally-produced 5.5 million doses via fill and finish," said Zulkarnain.
He said Pharmaniaga was awaiting approval from NRPA to produce two doses of vaccine per vial before distributing it.
"It takes about 21 days of testing after being produced at our factory. We have sent a report on our application to NPRA for two doses per vial.
"We have done the trial run in mid-June. It took a month to complete the test in compliance with NPRA and WHO. We hope the NPRA approve our test in two weeks or a month. If we obtain the approval by end of July, we will begin the fill and finish in early August, and our production capacity is expected to increase by 4.0 million per month once the two doses per vial are approved," he added.