At a press conference today, health minister Khairy Jamaluddin said this was among the new recommendations provided by the task force’s technical working committee after its evaluation of existing evidence on booster shots.
“For seniors and adults who have received all types of vaccines, be it Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Sinovac, it is highly recommended they receive their boosters at least three months after receiving their primary vaccine,” he said.
Previously, it was recommended that Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccine recipients had to wait six months after their second doses to receive their booster shots. Sinovac vaccine recipients had to wait three months.
Khairy added that regulatory bodies and health experts in the UK, Canada and Australia are also now recommending that booster doses be given as early as three months after the second dose.
He said that “strong evidence” collected over the past three weeks indicates that booster shots may increase protection against the Omicron variant, adding that initial results of a study of 21 million booster doses administered in the United Kingdom has shown “very convincing” results.
He added that the Institute for Medical Research (IMR) has conducted PCR genotyping assay tests on 366 samples of Covid-19 positive cases among travellers from Dec 21-25, with 306 of that number likely to be of the Omicron variant.
Khairy said the IMR is currently awaiting results from samples’ whole genome sequencing (WGS) tests to determine whether the travellers are indeed positive with the Omicron variant.
He added that Malaysia has lifted a travel ban on eight southern African countries that had first reported the Omicron variant last month.
Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe will now be moved to the list of high-risk countries.
Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Nigeria, Norway, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and the United States make up the other countries on the list of high-risk countries.
“We will stop the temporary travel ban from these eight African countries. It doesn’t make sense anymore as Omicron is coming from all the other countries – and we have seen the decline in cases in African nations as well,” he said.
“If possible, please avoid travel to these 18 countries until the situation stabilises.”
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