KUALA LUMPUR (July 1): American multinational pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc said today that it will only supply its Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to central governments and supra-national organisations such as COVAX for deployment in national immunisation programmes.
In a statement today, the pharmaceutical company stressed that neither Pfizer Inc nor any of its affiliates globally, have authorized anyone to import/market/distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
"To address the global health crisis, all our current Covid-19 vaccine supply agreements are directly with government entities. We believe that they are in the best position during the pandemic to distribute vaccines fairly and equitably across their populations.
"Currently, there is no authorized private distributor of our vaccine worldwide. The quality and efficacy of any vaccine moving through any non-authorized channels cannot be assured and should be viewed as suspect potentially putting lives at risk," it said.
It added that it has, since the beginning of the pandemic, worked closely with the Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Special Committee (JKJAV) in Malaysia, and that it is committed to bringing a safe and secure supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to Malaysians.
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On Wednesday, Malaysia's National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin said Malaysia will be receiving one million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Friday (July 2).
He also said the government will announce on Friday its decision on whether it intends to continue to make the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine available to teenagers.
This comes after the government said it would reconsider its previous decision to inoculate teenagers with the Pfizer vaccine, following reports of side effects like heart inflammation.
As of June 21, Malaysia has received 4.08 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 3.69 million doses of Sinovac and 828,000 doses of AstraZeneca thus far.
As of Wednesday, 2.31 million Malaysians had been fully vaccinated, while 3.47 million individuals had received their first vaccine jab, based on the latest data provided by the JKJAV.