Government gives assurance on smooth vaccine deliveries

KUALA TERENGGANU: The government has given its assurance that the delivery of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines will proceed smoothly and arrive intact in every state including in the interior areas.

Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Datuk Ahmad Amzad Hashim said the Health Ministry had conducted a practice run at Belaga Health Clinic in Sarawak on Jan 29 to test the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain.

''I am confident if we could implement it well even in a remote area like Belaga, God willing we will not have a big problem in other areas with much better logistics," he told reporters at Kampung Cina here today.

Ahmad Amzad said the locations for the storage of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines had been identified and each state had also provided ultra low temperature freezers to store the vaccines.

''There is no problem to store the vaccine supply which will arrive tomorrow as we already have 115 ultra low temperature freezers. The government have also bought 55 more freezers with an allocation of RM2.7 million,'' he said.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is expected to arrive in Malaysia tomorrow and the immunisation exercise is divided into three phases, with the first phase from February 26 to April 2021 for the frontliners, the second phase from April to August 2021 for those in high-risk groups and the third phase from May 2021 to February 2022 for adults aged 18 and above.

-- BERNAMA