Covid-19: Pfizer remains preferred vaccine choice under PICKids, says Khairy

PETALING JAYA: While the Sinovac vaccine for children will be made available at selected vaccination centres, Pfizer remains the preferred choice under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Children (PICKids).

"Per advice from our Covid-19 Technical Working Group, Pfizer will still be the preferred vaccine for #PICKids if your child has no history of allergies.

"CITF-C will, however, make Sinovac available at limited PPV for informed parental choice," Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said in a tweet on Friday (March 4).

On Thursday (March 3), Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah announced that Sinovac would be allowed for use under conditional approval in addition to the Pfizer jab for children aged five to 11.

Sinovac had previously received conditional registration approval for those aged 12 and above.

A total of 952,411 children or 26.8% of those aged five to 11 nationwide had received the first dose of vaccine under PICKids as of Thursday.

On Feb 17, Khairy said there had been an increase in the number of paediatric Covid-19 cases including hospital admissions, with a 160% rise in the number of cases among children below 12 this year due to the highly contagious Omicron variant.

Deputy Health Minister Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali then said on Feb 25 that many parents were adopting a wait-and-see attitude, with states such as Sabah, Terengganu and Kelantan recording child vaccination rates below 10% at the time.