KUALA LUMPUR: Covid-19 vaccine development in Malaysia has entered the recruitment phase at eight study sites, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.
Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba said it involved the inactivated vaccine produced by Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products Co Ltd., which began in June.
"The Health Ministry, through Clinical Research Malaysia (CRM), has been involved in talks with several international pharmaceutical companies on the vaccine development studies in Malaysia.
"Among them are inactivated vaccines by the Institute of Medical Biology Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (IMBCAMS) that is conducted at the ministry's nine hospitals, which saw the participation of 3,000 volunteers for the clinical trials in April," he said.
Meanwhile, four Covid-19 vaccine clinical studies were pending approval by the Medical Research and Ethics Committee (MREC) and the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA), he said.
They are Coronavac vaccine produced by Sinovac for trial subjects aged between three and 17-years-old, mRNA vaccine by Walvax Biotechnology, recombinant vaccine from Westvac Biopharma and protein subunit vaccine from Anhui Zhifei.
On a separate matter, Dr Adham said the MySejahtera app, which was launched on April 20, last year, has 27.7 million active registered individual users and 2.44 million premises, as of July 26.
"MySejahtera has recorded 6.7 billion cumulative check-ins at premises that utilise the QR code scanning facilities, with an average of 19.4 million check-ins daily."