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Published 16 Jan 2022, 11:28 am SGT
KUALA LUMPUR (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) – Malaysia will start vaccinating children aged between five and 11 beginning the end of January, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said, as the country prepares to transition from the pandemic phase to the endemic phase of Covid-19.
“In terms of preparing for us to enter the endemic era, we already have powerful tools in the form of vaccines. Malaysia is among the leading nations in administering the booster jabs,” he said in his 2022 New Year message for his ministry.
The Health Ministry had on Jan 6 said that Malaysia had granted conditional approval for the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged five to 11.
Mr Khairy had also said previously that Pfizer-BioNTech was the only coronavirus vaccine indicated for children in that age group. He also noted that the government would acquire treatment options for Covid-19 that could be used to bring the country towards endemicity.
More and more countries have started vaccinating children because they are seen as unwitting transmitters of the virus to high-risk people, experts have said.
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According to Malaysia’s data aggregator CovidNow, children aged five to 11 had made up about 10 per cent of of the country’s Covid-19 cases in recent weeks, compared with 3 per cent to 6 per cent among children in other age groups.
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