Malaysia's Drug Control Authority (DCA) has approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 12 above and above.
Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, in a statement today, said that conditional registration has also been given for the use of the CanSino and Johnson & Johnson vaccines - both of which only require one shot of the dose, as opposed to the current vaccines which require two doses.
Under the current National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme, only those aged 18 and above are vaccinated against COVID-19 in Malaysia.
Several other countries, including Singapore, Japan, Switzerland,the Philippines and Dubai are already innoculatiung youths in the 12-17 age bracket.
"Although this additional approbal has been given for (Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine), the Health Ministry is of the opinion that the priority for vaccination is still to those in the high-risk groups, in line with the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme," said Noor Hisham.
It was recently reported that a total of 82,341 infants and children had been infected with COVID-19 from Jan 25 to May 30, 2021.
The majority of the cases (27,402) involved children aged between 13 and 17, followed by kids aged between seven and 12, with 26,851 cases. As for children aged five and six years old, there were 8,237 cases recorded, while tots below four years old made up the third highest place in the list, with 19,851 cases.
Malaysia to date has a total of 662,457 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Sixty new deaths from the coronavirus was also reported yesterday, bringing the total number of fatalities in the country to 3,968.
Shuman
Tue Jun 15 2021