KUALA LUMPUR: The government is expecting some delay in the delivery of the supplies for AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
This was confirmed by National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP) Coordinating Minister Khairy Jamaluddin during the weekly press conference by the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) today.
"Yes, we are expecting some delay. I have been on calls for the last two to three days with AstraZeneca as well as other governments to make sure we can shore up our supply for his month," he said.
Khairy, who is also the Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, was asked to comment if Malaysia was facing similar delivery problem as the Philippines over the delay in the supplies of AstraZeneca produced by Thailand.
It was reported that delivery of the first batches of the vaccine to the Philippines has been delayed by several weeks.
Developed by the British-Swedish firm with Oxford University, the vaccine comes from its second manufacturing facility in Thailand, Siam Bioscience Co Ltd (Siam Bioscience).
Khairy previously said that the country expected to receive a total of 615,120 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines this month. It was not mentioned if the coming supply of the AstraZeneca is from Thailand.
The Health Ministry had said that the Drug Control Authority (DCA), during its 358th meeting, had granted conditional registration of the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured by Siam Bioscience for use during disaster.