EC to present SOP for Melaka Election tomorrow - Khairy

KUALA LUMPUR: The Election Commission (EC) will present standard operating procedures (SOP) for the upcoming Melaka state election (PRN) at the COVID-19 Pandemic Management Special Committee meeting chaired by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, tomorrow.

Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the Ministry of Health (MOH) would also provide its views on the matter in the same meeting.

He said the SOP to be proposed by the EC would take into account its experience in handling the Sabah PRN last year.

"We will make sure what happened in Sabah will not recur... and in my view, during the Sabah PRN we did not have any vaccinations (for COVID-19) and we accepted the fact that during that time there was no COVID-19 transmission related to the Delta variant.

"The MOH will comment tomorrow because the election SOP will be finalised tomorrow," he said at a press conference today.

On the issue of discrepancies in vaccine manufacturer information on the COVID-19 digital vaccination certificate, Khairy said checks detected data overlaps between different vaccine groups using the same Global Trade International Number (GTIN) in the Vaccine Management System (VMS).

Referring to an article posted by a portal, Khairy explained that the manufacturer's information stated on the lot release certificate for the complainant's first dose with batch number ABX6083, AstraZeneca AB, Sodertalje Sweden, was accurate.

"Currently, all AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines received through the COVAX facility use the same GTIN code as allocated to SK Bioscience in the VMS.

"This caused the complainant's digital vaccination certificate to display SK Bioscience as the manufacturer in line with the data provided by the VMS to MySejahtera," he said, adding that to tackle the problem, the MOH is updating the information on all the data involved which is expected to be completed before the end of October.

He explained that the update is expected to involve nearly 100,000 AstraZeneca vaccine recipient data and the updated data will be synchronised to the users on the MySejahtera mobile application automatically.

Meanwhile, Khairy stressed that there was no breach of database and information on MySejahtera following complaints from users who claimed that they are receiving fake emails and SMS from the application.

He said initial investigations carried out by the National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA) revealed that it was due to misuse of the Application Programming Interface (API), adding that measures to improve the security have been implemented.

-- BERNAMA