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Today is the third day of the Dewan Rakyat special meeting for the third session of the 14th Parliament.

In this session Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin will address the lower house on the vaccination programme under the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (JKJAV).

The last time Malaysia’s Parliament met was on 17 December 2020. A month later, in January of 2021, a State of Emergency was declared.

10:02 am – Deputy Dewan Rakyat Speaker Datuk Mohd Rashid Hasnon kick starts Parliament with a prayer and announcing that Khairy will brief the Parliament today on the national vaccine drive.

10:04 am – Opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) asked the Deputy Speaker whether they can debate on issues such as the Emergency and the doctor’s strike.

10:18 am – Rembau MP, Khairy starts by talking about the history of the JKJAV and their responsibilities.

10:27 am – Khairy said that vaccines which are brought here will require a local product registration holder to submit an analysis of additional data to be evaluated by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA).

10:41 am – The Rembau MP said the target to vaccinate a large portion the public has been changed to October after the surge in Covid-19 infections instead of February of next year.

10:43 am – KJ said that to make this happen, by August, at least 40% of the adult population in all states needs to be vaccinated. He also mentioned that the government had to deploy to diversify the registration process – besides MySejahtera – to reach out to the public.

10:48 am – He mentioned that some states have a low registration late compared to the others but acknowledges that it might be attributed to problems like infrastructure and logistics.

10:49 am – He said the Health Ministry has assigned Protect Health as the administrator for private institutions and non-profit organisations under PICK.

10:55 am – KJ mentions that in total, 26.38 million vaccine doses have been secured – by government purchases and also donations from other countries.

MORE TO COME

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