KUALA LUMPUR: The government today clarified that the RM70 million allocation was not solely for the development of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine registration system.
Khairy Jamaluddin, who is the Coordinating Minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP), said the amount was a ceiling set by the government for the development and management of various other health systems.
These, he said, include the management and monitoring of the NIP, developing a daily reporting dashboard for the vaccination drive, logistics management, vaccine delivery network system, call centres and the MyVac system for volunteer mobilisation management.
He said the budget allocation was also for an integration system to connect the data collected by MySejahtera with the Health Ministry's existing system.
Besides that, he said the allocation was also used to ensure the smooth running of the registration and vaccination verification system as well as to develop Google Maps services in the MySejahtera application, genomic surveillance and immunisation surveillance systems and the acquisition of a mobile queue management system for Vaccination Delivery Centres (PPVs).
"Therefore, the RM70 million is not just for the website, but entails several other developments; and the RM70 million is only a ceiling. It is not the actual figure which will be spent by the government," he said during a virtual press conference.
Meanwhile, Khairy said he was confident that Malaysia would be able to administer 150,000 jabs per day based on the vaccine delivery schedules for June and in view of efforts to open more PPVs nationwide.
"For the AstraZeneca jab, we are expecting 610,000 doses in June and 410,000 in July. But this is pending the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency approval as the stock is coming from AstraZeneca's factory in Thailand.
"As for Sinovac, Pharmaniaga has informed us that all our orders (12 million doses) will be fully delivered in June and July, which entails 5,089,800 fill-and-finish doses by Pharmaniaga, and 6,910,200 doses of the finished product from Sinovac in China."
On May 21, Khairy said Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba had signed an additional agreement with Pfizer for another 12.8 million doses, which makes for a total of 44.8 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine ordered by Malaysia.