AstraZeneca Delivers 586,700 COVID-19 Vaccine Doses to Malaysia
AstraZeneca delivered 586,700 doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for use in Malaysia recently on July 2. The first batch of shipment is from Thailand, which is part of AstraZeneca’s commitment to deliver 6.4 million doses directly to Malaysia in addition to the delivery of millions more doses through COVAX and donations from other countries.
A total of 2,414,700 doses of the vaccine have been delivered to date.
The delivery was officially handed over to the Minister of Health, Dato’ Sri Dr Adham Baba and Deputy Head Secretary of the Ministry of Health, Datuk Harjeet Singh to mark the milestone. The doses will support the National Immunisation Programme’s mass vaccination spearheaded by the Ministry of Health.
Country President of AstraZeneca Malaysia, Dr Sanjeev Panchal said: “Today’s delivery is an important milestone in the battle against the pandemic. We look forward to continued cooperation with the government and others working to support Malaysia’s recovery from this devastating pandemic.”
AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine has been shown to be well-tolerated and highly effective against all disease severities across all adults in clinical trials, and emerging real-world evidence from tens of millions of people also shows that the vaccine reduces severe disease and hospital admissions by more than 80% after the first dose (1). The vaccine has also demonstrated a high level of protection against the delta and alpha variants, including being 92% effective against hospitalisation due to the delta variant (2).
AstraZeneca continues to supply its COVID-19 vaccine globally at no profit during the pandemic.
References
- Voysey M, et al; Oxford COVID Vaccine Trial Group. Single-dose administration and the influence of the timing of the booster dose on immunogenicity and efficacy of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine: a pooled analysis of four randomised trials. Lancet. 2021;397 (10277): 881-891. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00432-3. Epub 2021 Feb 19. Erratum in: Lancet. 2021; 397 (10277): 880.
- Parry HM, et al; (2021) Single Vaccination with BNT162b2 or ChAdOx1 in Older People Induces Equivalent Antibody Generation but Enhanced Cellular Responses after ChAdOx1. Preprints with The Lancet: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3825573.
