The Health Ministry has cautioned the public against falling for online advertisements on the sale of COVID-19 vaccines in the country.

At a press conference yesterday, Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that currently, vaccines from Pfizer BioNTech are only supplied by the government and authorised parties.

"There are parties who take advantage (by offering the vaccine to the public) online, and there also those who claim that they are agents from certain companies who have approached us to take the COVID-19 vaccine from them.

"The Ministry's Pharmacy Enforcement Division, through the cyber forensic unit is constantly working with the local authorities and Interpol to monitor the sale of vaccines online," Bernama quoted Noor Hisham saying.

He was commenting on the existence of online advertisements promoting the Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for RM63.88.

The government currently provides COVID-19 vaccines for free, for everyone in the country.

The country's vaccination programme will take part in three phases - beginning with medical and non-medical frontliners receiving their jabs from February to April. The second phase from April until August will cover senior citizens aged over 65 years old and other high-risk groups while the final phase, from May until February next year, is targeted at the general adult population aged 18 and above.

As of yesterday, there have been a total of 307,943 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country, with 1,153 deaths.

The global coronavirus infection and death tally, meanwhile, has surpassed 116.2 million, and 2.58 million, respectively.


Source: Bernama
Photo source: theconversation.com