KUALA LUMPUR, March 8 — Malaysia conducts its own testing on all Covid-19 vaccines imported into the country to ensure the product is safe for its population, Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba said today.
He gave an assurance that both the testing and approval processes are very strict, in response to news reports of a fatality and adverse side effects from recipients of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine in Europe.
The National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) had given conditional approval to the British pharmaceutical firm’s vaccines last week.
“Even though conditional approval was given by the Health Ministry through the NPRA last week for the AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, we will always ensure that all these vaccines being brought in are safe before we decide to administer it.
“Our position has been the same that each vaccine we bring in needs to go through the approval of NPRA, and the conditional approval that has been given by the NPRA is also convincing, so we can go ahead with administering vaccines that have received conditional approval from NPRA,” he said via a virtual press conference held over Zoom this evening.
Austrian authorities have suspended inoculations with a batch of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine as a precaution while investigating the death of one person and the illness of another after receiving shots.
This after international newswire Reuters quoted Austrian health authorities who revealed receiving two reports of a temporal connection with a vaccination involving a particular batch of AstraZeneca vaccines at a clinic in Lower Austria.
It reported that a 49-year-old woman died as a result of severe coagulation disorders, while a 35-year-old woman developed a pulmonary embolism and is recovering. A pulmonary embolism is an acute lung disease caused by a dislodged blood clot.
However, the report noted there was no evidence that could tie the symptoms to the vaccine.
