PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry is in talks with a COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer on the procurement of vaccines for children aged 12 and below.

Without naming the company, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the company was making preparations to send relevant data to all regulatory bodies around the world, including Malaysia.

"The MOH will evaluate the data when it is available ... they just need some time, maybe next month they will send it to the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) so that registration can be made.

"We do not want a situation where adults and adolescents are protected in a pandemic, but children are not," Khairy said in a media conference here today.

He also stressed that MOH's strategy was no longer to pursue herd immunity but to provide protection to as many people as possible through COVID-19 vaccination.

According to Khairy, the MOH is also taking precautionary measures on the COVID-19 vaccine for children so as not to disrupt the reopening of schools next month.

"So, we will do everything possible to make sure schools are safe for children until they get the COVID-19 vaccine," he said.

On the MySejahtera application, he said the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Planning Unit (MAMPU) will evaluate the work carried out by KPISoft Sdn Bhd, the company that developed the app before determining the amount of payment to be made by the Treasury.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri, in a written reply in Parliament, said the government will begin paying KPISoft Sdn Bhd from April 2021 after its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) model expired on March 31 this year.

MySejahtera is an application developed by the Malaysian government to monitor the spread of COVID-19 in the country by enabling users to perform self-health assessments.

-- BERNAMA