Mysterious vaccine 'donor' Yong Chee Kong becomes a hot search term on Google

PETALING JAYA: Yong Chee Kong has become a very famous name in Malaysia overnight.

Malaysians are curious to know more about the mysterious individual who reportedly offered to donate two million doses of CoronaVac vaccines to Penang, after Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin dismissed the offer as bogus.

A search of his name on Google Trends, a website by the tech giant that analyses the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages, shows that the term "Yong Chee Kong" recorded a big jump in popularity in Malaysia from Wednesday (May 19).

According to Google Trends, searches for his name by Malaysians over the last week went up from zero to 100 points over four hours from noon to 4 pm on Wednesday.

The numbers represent the search interest relative to the highest point for the selected region and time.

A value of 100 is the peak popularity of the term, while a value of 50 means that the term is half as popular.

A search on Google Maps over Yong's mailing address in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, showed an ordinary double-storey terrace house on a quiet street.

Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow had claimed in a press conference on Tuesday that the Health Ministry declined to approve Penang's request for a private company to sponsor two million Covid-19 vaccine doses from China.

DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng then entered the fray by urging Chow to just accept the vaccine offer without the Federal government's approval and deal with the consequences later.

On Wednesday (May 19), Khairy, who is also the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme coordinating minister, said the offer to the state government was bogus.

According to Khairy, Lim and Chow had made the claim based on a letter from one "Yong Chee Kong", who said he is a Malaysian working at Hong Kong-based Xintai Development Enterprise Ltd.

"Yong" claimed that he had been in touch with Sinovac Biotech and was willing to pay a US$2mil (RM8.28mil) deposit to procure the vaccine.

However, Khairy, upon checking with Sinovac Biotech, found there was no application made to the producer about such a donation while its international sales head Coco Chang confirmed that she had not been contacted by "Yong" on the matter.

In the letter produced by the Penang state government,"Yong" claimed he had been in touch with Chang.

Khairy also said that a search for Xintai Development Enterprise yielded no results, adding that a staff member had alerted him to a similar letter by "Yong" delivered to him on Feb 9, also offering to donate two million doses to Sabah.

Chow has since called on the "private company" to come forward and clear its name..

Chow also maintained that the Penang government had taken prudent action after receiving the offer through a letter dated Feb 1, and sought the opinion of the state Health Department on the matter.