KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 17 — The government is in talks to add the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine to the five already confirmed for Malaysia, Khairy Jamaluddin said today.

The innovation, science, and technology minister who is in charge of coordinating Malaysia’s Covid-19 vaccination programme confirmed this when asked if the country was evaluating more vaccine candidates.

"Yes, we are working to add it to our portfolio. The single dose vaccines from J&J and CanSino will be useful for interior areas as well as documented/undocumented migrants who may not want to come out twice,” he said on Twitter.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin launched the National Immunisation Programme (NIP) handbook that detailed Malaysia’s strategy and tactics for vaccinating the country against Covid-19.

In the guidebook, the Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Special Committee disclosed that Malaysia has already secured 66.7 million doses or enough for 109.65 per cent coverage of the population.

The vaccines already finalised include Pfizer-Biontech, AstraZeneca, Sinovac, CanSinoBIO, and Sputnik V.

Except for the CanSinoBIO vaccine, the rest require two doses administered at varying intervals.

Johnson & Johnson announced its single-dose Jansen vaccine at the end of last month.