Vaccine procurement was a matter of ‘life and death’

THE emergency procurement of the Covid-19 vaccines was made despite the agreement being seen as favouring suppliers because it was a matter of “life and death” during the pandemic, says Deputy Health Minister Lukanisman Awang Sauni.

He said countries entering agreements with the vaccine makers including Pfizer had to sign a confidential disclosure agreement (CDA) and a binding term sheet (BTS) before the manufacturing and supply agreement (MSA) was inked. This allowed the supplier to come up with confidential terms.

“If the government had not signed those documents, early negotiations and information such as the content of active ingredients and initial findings of clinical trials would not have been made known to the government,” he said.

Lukanisman added that changes to procurement procedures had to be taken in line with the emergency situation at that time.

“The Covid-19 procurement was literally a life and death issue,” he said to a question by Hassan Abdul Karim (PH-Pasir Gudang) while winding up the debate on the White Paper on Covid-19 Vaccine Procurement Management in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

Hassan had asked why the contract was signed when it was found to have contained terms that were more in favour of the supplier.

Lukanisman said the Attorney General’s Chambers had flagged the irregularities in the draft agreement which was seen as being more in favour of the company.

The decision by the government to continue with the vaccine procurement was to prevent the rise of Covid-19 infections and achieve the 80% herd immunity, he added.

Addressing the claims of a delay in procuring the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine compared with Singapore, Lukanisman said Malaysia was the second country in Asean to receive the mRNA vaccine after the island-republic.

He said a thorough analysis on procurement and the implementation of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) had to be conducted since Malaysia’s population was six times that of Singapore.

Lukanisman also said the government had agreed to change the remaining order of 2.7 million vaccines doses for children issued by Pfizer BioNTech to a new generation of vaccines or bivalents targeted for the vulnerable groups without any financial implication.

The bivalent vaccines provide protection against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and the Omicron subvariants such as BA.4 and BA.5, which were previously said to be vaccine-resistant.