PETALING JAYA: Singapore may become the first foreign country to recognise the MySejahtera application as Malaysia’s “vaccination passport” in order to allow fully-vaccinated Malaysians to enter the island state.
Similarly, the MySejahtera application may also be accepted for international travel in the future, subject to approval from other governments, said National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin (pic).
“Once you have the yellow profile on your MySejahtera, that means you are fully vaccinated. We will use the QR code once the Covid-19 Emergency Management Technical Committee recommends allowing certain freedoms (such as international travel) that are not currently possible,” Khairy said.
He also said the government was in talks with other countries for mutual recognition of the digital vaccination certificates.
“Our talks with Singapore are almost finalised for the recognition of the vaccination passports,” he said.
Khairy stressed that while the country was on its path to reaching its target to vaccinate 80% of its population, the rakyat should continue to strictly observe the Covid-19 standard operating procedure.
“The vaccinations, for now, are not a substitute for SOP enforcement, especially for sectors operating during the lockdown,” he said.
To a question from The Star on whether a vaccine booster shot or yearly vaccinations are on the cards, Khairy said the matter was still under attention.
However, he did not discount the possibility of additional Covid-19 shots on top of the two doses provided currently.
“This will depend on the Covid-19 variants. Currently, we are still monitoring the development of the virus variants. As of June 4, we have undertaken 1,076 genome sequencing to identify the type of variants in Malaysia.
“We will do 3,000 genomic sequencing in the next three months,” he said.
He also pointed out that Malaysia will continue its serology tests to monitor the duration of effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines once given to individuals.
“We have to do serology tests to ensure neutralising antibodies are present in people vaccinated months ago. If we see a drop in the neutralising antibodies, then we may have a third booster shot for these people,” he said.
