Wong Kah Woh (PH-Taiping), a former parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman, said he was annoyed that the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) was raised when it came to issues pertaining to the purchase of the vaccines.

“It is used as a shield to protect the health ministry from revealing the actual figures,” he said in the Dewan Rakyat.

Wong said he had reviewed the NDA when he headed the PAC and found that the government had been using it to avoid revealing the cost of procuring the vaccines.

“If we were to reveal the total amount spent on all the vaccine brands it will not breach the NDA.”

In a written reply to Wong yesterday, health minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa said the government was unable to disclose specific details as it was bound by the vaccine manufacturers’ NDA.

She said this when revealing that nearly 2.8 million vaccine doses stored at the health ministry and Covid-19 storage facilities had expired as of Feb 28. The 2,796,638 vaccine doses made up 3.27% of the total number of vaccine doses acquired by the government.

Zaliha said the vaccine doses were of various brands and included contributions.