By Ronnie Liu
THE ABC News has, on December 8 last year, reported that Indonesia has received 1.2 million doses of coronavirus trial drugs, calling this China’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’.
We all know that this was the result of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi’s brief visit to Malaysia and Indonesia in October last year, offering Malaysia vaccine for less than USD$20 per dose.
To date, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and neither Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba nor Science, Technology, and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has even mentioned about the trial vaccines.
If Indonesia, being the most populous Muslim nation, was willing to accept the free vaccines from China, why did Malaysia not accept it in the first place? After all, hasn’t the Special Muzakarah Committee of the National Council for the Islamic Religious Affairs not given its verdict that the use of COVID-19 vaccine is “compulsory (wajib) for groups that have been identified by the Government and permissible (harus) for others”.
Perlis mufti Datuk Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin in a Facebook post has also defended that “even if there is an ingredient which is not permissible, the chemical transformation process will make it clean and halal.“
This decision was made in early December, during the Special Muzakarah meeting.
Malaysia’s reluctance to accept the free vaccines raises a lot of questions. Instead, there was a lot of haste in signing the agreement with Pfizer when we all know that the Pfizer’s vaccine requires refrigeration of minus 70°C, compared to the Chinese vaccine.
To date, neither the Federal Drug Administration nor the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has given its approval to any of the vaccines. Under normal circumstances, these vaccines would still have to go through at least three stages of clinical trials and for a vaccine to be discovered within one year, it is hard to believe that these pharmaceutical companies do not provide trial vaccines.
According to the ABC report, similar final-stage trial vaccines were also distributed by Sinovac in other third world countries such as Brazil, Chile, Turkey, and the Philippines apart from Indonesia. In fact, countries such as Brazil had received their first 120,000 doses of the trial vaccine in October last year.
Under normal circumstances, it is understood that vaccines that are provided on trial basis would not incur any cost to the recipients and it is understood that the pharmaceutical companies would not compensate anyone suffering from any side effects from the vaccine.
It is unlikely that China had not made a similar offer to Malaysia as it had offered to the other two Asean neighbours.
It is time for Muhyiddin, Adham and Khairy to be upfront and give an answer to the Malaysian public: Is it true that Malaysia was offered the trial vaccines by China, and if yes, why did Malaysia not accept the free vaccines from China?
I would also like to know whether any of the other pharmaceutical companies are also offering trial vaccines, and if yes, how many million doses are provided by them? – Jan 7, 2021
Ronnie Liu is the state assemblyman for Sungai Pelek state constituency. He is also the DAP central executive committee member and the Selangor DAP secretary.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
