“I have confirmation that the delivery of AstraZeneca will commence in June, when we will receive our first 600,000 doses,” said National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme’s coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin today.

“The deliveries will come subsequently every month,” he added during a press conference.

The National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency, under the health ministry, approved the conditional registration of the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 2.

Several countries including Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Thailand have stopped AstraZeneca rollouts of their own following reports of blood clots occurring in several individuals after being vaccinated.

Khairy, however, was reported to have said that Malaysia would continue its AstraZeneca programme as there was no evidence that the vaccine causes blood clots.

The science, technology and innovation minister added that AstraZeneca had informed Malaysia on the vaccine’s side effects and had yet to find data linking the vaccine with reports of blood clots in people, which had resulted in several deaths.

Khairy said the AstraZeneca vaccines will be procured directly from the manufacturers in Thailand as opposed to the Covax global vaccine-sharing scheme.

Malaysia has secured a total of 12.8 million AstraZeneca doses.

In total, the country has agreed to purchase 66.7 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines from various drug makers and plans to vaccinate at least 80% of the population by February next year.

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