However, that plan has just hit a snag.
Supply has been coming in slow
The mass supply of COVID-19 vaccination has reportedly been pushed back to a month, Code Blue reported.Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Khairy Jamaluddin told the website that a total of 2.5 million weekly doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be delivered to Malaysia from July onwards, which is one month off his initial projection.
Out of the 2.5 million doses, two million will be from Pfizer-BioNTech, while 500,000 doses will be from Sinovac.
In May and June, local pharmaceutical company Pharmaniaga Berhad will ramp up the supply for the Sinovac vaccine, although Khairy did not mention the specifics of the deliveries.
"So, we will be ramping up. Starting from now, with the Sinovac and then continuous delivery of Pfizer that comes in every week, as well as the AstraZeneca delivery," he was quoted as saying.
This week, Khairy revealed that the country will be receiving a total of 259,740 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
As for the AstraZeneca vaccine, Khairy said that Malaysia is still waiting for the delivery of 6.4 million doses that were directly procured from AstraZeneca itself.
Below target
Back in April, Khairy said that the government plans to administer over 160,000 doses daily so that they could complete the national vaccination programme by the end of the year.However, as of Tuesday (18 May), only a total of two million doses of COVID-19 vaccination have been administered so far, The Star Online reported.
If the government wants to hit their vaccination target, they would have to pick up the pace.