PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia’s Covid-19 immunisation programme has received a timely boost with the arrival of the single-dose CanSino vaccine from China.

       The batch of 200,000 doses in “finished product” form is the first shipment out of 3.5 million doses ordered from China’s CanSino Biologics.

       “Supply of this single-dose vaccine will further intensify the country’s immunisation programme, especially in low-access areas, and will help Malaysia to achieve herd immunity as targeted in the National Recovery Plan within the set time,” said the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry (Mosti) in a statement.

       The single-dose regimen will also ease the government’s logistics in reaching out to people in remote locations to vaccinate them.

       So far, Malaysia has been utilising three vaccines for its Covid-19 vaccination programme: Cominarty (Pfizer BioNTech), CoronaVac (Sinovac) and AstraZeneca.

       These vaccines need to be administered in two doses with varying interval periods.

       Malaysia has also granted approval to another single-dose Covid-19 vaccine: Janssen by Johnson & Johnson.

       Both the CanSino and Janssen vaccines have received conditional approval from the Drug Control Authority.

       Solution Biologics is the product registration holder for CanSino in Malaysia.

       Yesterday, the vaccine shipment arrived at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 7.50am on a MASKargo flight from Beijing.

       Present to witness the arrival of the vaccines were Mosti secretary-general Datuk Dr Siti Hamisah Tapsir and Health Ministry secretary-general Datuk Mohd Shafiq Abdullah.