KUALA LUMPUR, July 16 — Pharmaniaga Bhd, one of the most actively traded stocks this morning, saw its share price slipping following the discontinuation of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine from China.
Pharmaniaga signed a contract to supply about 12 million doses of the vaccine to the government, and according to the contract, it has to complete the delivery by November this year.
However, due to the worsening pandemic situation, delivery of the vaccine would be expedited, said Pharmaniaga managing director, Datuk Zulkarnain Md Eusope on Wednesday.
He said the pharmaceutical company had already delivered 11.5 million doses, or 93 per cent of the promised Sinovac vaccine — comprising 3.6 million doses through ‘fill and finish’ manufacturing, as well as 7.9 million doses of the finished product that had been imported.
Yesterday, Health Minister Dr Adham Baba said Malaysia would stop administering the COVID-19 vaccine produced by China once the existing supply of the vaccine have finished, as it has a sufficient number of other vaccines for the nationwide vaccination programme.
Henceforth, Malaysia’s inoculation drive would be largely anchored by the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine, said the minister.
As at 10.33 am, Pharmaniaga’s share price eased 14 sen to 90 sen with 61.08 million shares transacted.
