Covid-19: All vaccines effective in reducing deaths, severe infections, says KJ

PUTRAJAYA: All the vaccines under Malaysia’s Covid-19 immunisation portfolio are effective in reducing deaths and severe infections, says Khairy Jamaluddin.

The Health Minister said a study by the ministry on fully vaccinated individuals in the country has shown that the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinovac vaccines have brought ICU admission and death rates down.

“The most important finding of the study is that all three vaccines are highly effective.

“In terms of ICU admissions, for those who have completed their vaccine dosage whether it is Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Sinovac, the rate is at 0.006%. Which is very, very low.

“The death rate is at 0.01%.

“The key takeaway here is that all the vaccines in Malaysia’s portfolio are effective and have cut deaths and ICU admissions,” said Khairy at a press conference here Friday (Sept 24).

The study, which was conducted by the ministry’s Institute of Clinical Research (ICR), involved 14,500,984 million recipients of AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinovac in the country.

The study had also shown that 1,445 fully vaccinated people out of the 14 million had died - which is a rate of 0.010%.

Of the 1,445 deaths, 1,108 have been fully vaccinated with the Sinovac vaccine.

However, the 1,108 deaths are out of 7.2 million Sinovac recipients in the country - a rate of 0.015%.

Khairy said the ministry will conduct an analysis on the findings to see if there is a need to give booster shots to Sinovac recipients.

“We need to do a deeper analysis on these involving Sinovac recipients. Are they mainly due to the vaccine type or other reasons such as patient history? Or were they infected by Covid-19 variants of concern?

“If it is due to the vaccine, we will take this into consideration in giving out booster shots. We will also see if the booster shot needs to be a different brand,” said Khairy.