PETALING JAYA: While the Sinovac vaccine for youngsters might be made out there at chosen vaccination centres, Pfizer remains the preferred choice under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Children (PICKids).
“Per recommendation from our Covid-19 Technical Working Group, Pfizer will nonetheless be the preferred vaccine for #PICKids in case your baby has no historical past of allergy symptoms.
“CITF-C will, nonetheless, make Sinovac out there at restricted PPV for knowledgeable parental choice,” Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin stated in a tweet on Friday (March 4).
On Thursday (March 3), Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah introduced that Sinovac could be allowed to be used under conditional approval along with the Pfizer jab for youngsters aged 5 to 11.
Sinovac had beforehand acquired conditional registration approval for these aged 12 and above.
A complete of 952,411 kids or 26.8% of these aged 5 to 11 nationwide had acquired the primary dose of vaccine under PICKids as of Thursday.
On Feb 17, Khairy stated there had been a rise within the variety of paediatric Covid-19 circumstances together with hospital admissions, with a 160% rise within the variety of circumstances amongst kids beneath 12 this yr as a result of extremely contagious Omicron variant.
Deputy Health Minister Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali then stated on Feb 25 that many dad and mom had been adopting a wait-and-see perspective, with states resembling Sabah, Terengganu and Kelantan recording baby vaccination charges beneath 10% on the time.
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