A doctor working at a private clinic at Taman Nusa Bestari, who wanted to be known only as Dr Daniel, said the government should review the conditions and consider the need to reduce the costs that clinics would have to bear in joining PICK.

One of the conditions catching private clinics off-guard is that they must have pharmaceutical-grade refrigerators, which cost more than RM4,000 each. Most clinics already own fridges that can store vaccines.

Daniel said the fridges already in place were more than capable of storing the Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines, which are typically kept at temperatures of between two and eight degrees Celsius.

“In fact, based on a report by Gang Zeng, a Sinovac researcher involved in the CoronaVac study, the Sinovac vaccine can be stored in a normal fridge,” he told FMT.

He said many doctors in private clinics and clinic owners were keen to help the nation achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible by increasing the number of vaccination centres.

He also said many private clinics had experience in storing expensive vaccines such as the Gardasil jab for human papillomavirus.

ProtectHealth Malaysia, a non-profit company set up under the health ministry, manages the registration of private clinics as vaccination centres for PICK.

Private clinics are also required to prepare cold boxes for the transfer of vaccines. “This will add to the costs, especially in rural areas,” Daniel said. “This will be on top of the costs in picking up the jabs from the locations set by ProtectHealth.

“Each clinic will be paid RM14 for each jab and this hardly covers the costs.”

He said other costs would be incurred with the preparation of daily reports and in managing vaccine recipients.

Daniel said he was confident that many private clinics would want to take part in PICK as a form of national service, but he called for consideration of the expertise and equipment already available at clinics.

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