Adham told the Dewan Rakyat the two pharmaceutical firms have “given their commitment” to manufacture their inactivated vaccines here.

“This is on top of several other efforts that have commenced, including a collaboration with a firm from India,” he said when answering a question from Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (PH-Pandan).

Adham said Malaysia’s own scientists were working under his ministry on developing messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology and inactivated vaccine jabs, and were planning on a collaboration with a researcher from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.

The Thai researcher, he said, was among the experts who collaborated with the US in developing an mRNA vaccine, though he did not mention which vaccine specifically.

He also said Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob would be announcing the government’s strategic roadmap on local vaccine development on Nov 1.

Adham said Putrajaya had spent RM314 million of the RM1 billion allocated for the roll-out of the national Covid-19 immunisation programme (PICK) as at Aug 31.

Most of this money was used for operating vaccination centres (PPVs), upgrading the government’s data network and vaccine administration system, and boosting registrations.

He said the ministry was using blockchain technology for its vaccine management system to record those who have been vaccinated.

It had its own vaccine certificate verifier to determine the authenticity of each certificate through its QR code.

Adham also said that to improve the health ministry’s contact tracing system, it will work on using Bluetooth to map out the possibility of interaction, while big data will be used to identify Covid-19 hotspots and high-risk areas.

He said a tracer hub dashboard will be completed by October to make it easier for frontliners to conduct contact tracing, while geofencing will be used by the end of next month to monitor people under surveillance.

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