By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, Feb 4: Among the 23 Sarawakian volunteers signing up for Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial, two have received the injection yesterday.
“What we have started is a vaccine (clinical) trial which is done in the whole nation. There are nine centres, including one in Sarawak General Hospital.
“So far only 23 have signed the consent (forms) as of yesterday. Two were given the injection yesterday. So the process is still ongoing.
“So those who have registered, they will be contacted and screened and so on. So once they consent, they will be given the time to come for the injection. After that, they will be followed up for 13 months,” said Sarawak Health Director Dr Chin Zin Hing at a press conference to update Covid-19 in Sarawak today.
On Jan 11, 2021, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had announced in January that Malaysia is participating in a phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial which will start on Jan 21 at nine Health Ministry (MOH) hospitals nationwide.
Expecting to involve 3,000 volunteers, he said Malaysia would be the first country outside China to conduct the trial of inactivated Covid-19 vaccine candidate made by the Institute of Medical Biology Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, China.
In the same special address broadcast live on local television stations, Muhyiddin also announced that MOH’s National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) had also approved the registration of the Cover-19 vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer and Malaysia is expected to receive the supply of Pfizer vaccine for the first phase at the end of February.
On the Pfizer vaccine, Dr Chin confirmed that Sarawak will receive it at the end of February, and the frontliners will be the first to be administered the vaccine.
“We will start the vaccine programme for the frontliners in February,” said Dr Chin. — DayakDaily
