Sin Chew Daily

When world-class pharmaceuticals announced that they had successfully developed the coronavirus vaccines with up to 94.5% effectiveness, health minister Adham Baba said the ministry had to first make sure the vaccines would not have side effects on the recipients, meaning we still need to go through the "professional evaluation and observation" before placing the order, as the rest of the world is rushing to grab the vaccines.

As such, when the vaccines are already in the market, they may not be available to us yet. Malaysians may have to travel overseas to get the injection if they really want the vaccine.

Besides claims by China and Russia that they have successfully carried out third phase clinical trials on human bodies, there is major breakthrough on the coronavirus vaccine jointly developed by the world's biggest pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech, with up to 90% effectiveness. Pfizer says it will apply to the US Food and Drug Administration for the "emergency use" of the vaccine. If everything goes well, the company will be able to produce up to 1.3 billion doses next year, which is a good news indeed.

The second good news is that the study on Moderna's mRNA-1273 has been successfully executed, and the vaccine boasts up to 94.5% efficacy. Moreover, it can be stored up to six months at -20°C, much less demanding than the -70°C transportation and storage temperature requirement for Pfizer's vaccine. However, Moderna's annual production capacity is only 500 million to 1 billion doses.

If the studies on vaccines elsewhere in the world cannot come up with encouraging results, these two major biotech giants will only produce enough vaccines for 30% of the world's population. Given the Malaysian health ministry's passive attitude at this moment, the approximately two billion doses coming online next year may not get to make it to Malaysia!

Another concern is that we won't be able to buy Pfizer's vaccine as we do not have cold chain transportation technology capable of transporting and storing the vaccine at -70°C. The vaccine can only last for five days in a normal freezer.

As we do not have the technology to transport the vaccine at such low temperatures, we have to exclude Pfizer's vaccine for the time being, and fight for Moderna's limited production with the rest of the world. Moderna's vaccine production capacity will only be able to meet 13% of global demand, and if we do not fight for it, we may not even get the vaccine by 2023, not to mention next year.

The successful development of coronavirus vaccines is no doubt a great news for the world, but that does not mean we can take things lightly. We must ready ourselves to acquire the vaccines.

As we have joined COVAX, we can gain priority access to vaccine doses for 10% of our population, which unfortunately is only enough to meet the needs of doctors, nurses, police and other frontline personnel and some high-risk individuals, and is far from being enough for the rest of the population.

The consequences will be grave if we fall behind in our access to the vaccines. When countries liberated from the bondage of the virus can lift their travel restrictions, we will remain locked out of the world by another year or two of CMCO.

We have already grown tired of the rubber-stamp briefing on daily new infection numbers. Please, update us on the progress of securing the vaccines!

Minister in the PM's Dept Mohd Redzuan Md Yusof has said the government hopes to secure the supply of vaccines within the shortest time possible, but his statement has been ambiguous. Perhaps we should get health DG Dr Noor Hisham to brief us on such an important matter instead.

The real good news is when we can secure the supply of the vaccines as soon as they are made available to the market.