PETALING JAYA: Covid-19 vaccines which will be used in Malaysia are halal and do not contain any animal-derived ingredients, deputy science, technology and innovation minister Ahmad Amzad Hashim said today. He said most Covid-19 vaccines do not contain any ingredients derived from pigs.
He said this was explained in the National Fatwa Council’s decision on the vaccine which was presented to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.
Malaysia has signed deals to procure the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine from the US, Russia’s Sputnik V, and the CoronaVac, produced by China’s Sinovac.
Amzad said the vaccines Malaysia is procuring are those with among the highest efficacies based on the over 80 million doses given to people in 57 countries.
He said there are a small number of isolated cases in which those who received the vaccines experienced complications but these had no links to the effects of the vaccine.
Amzad urged Malaysians not to be influenced by foreign press reports which created doubts and fears over the vaccination programme.
Scary news headlines
“I have asked mainstream media editors to be careful with the headlines of news reports particularly those related to Covid-19 and vaccines,” he said in a statement.
“Don’t use words which are confusing or scare people just to attract the attention of readers,” he said, adding this could affect efforts to address the Covid-19 situation.
Amzad cited the example of reports that China has begun using anal swabs to test for Covid-19.
He said at a glance, such headlines could lead to people thinking the same would be done in Malaysia, despite the fact that China itself has no plans to use that as a standard method of testing.
“Experts in Malaysia have stressed that the existing methods are suitable and effective.”
He gave another example of reports on a famous Middle East preacher’s remarks that in the case of an emergency, vaccines that even contained ingredients derived from pigs was permissible.
He said this led to speculation that Covid-19 vaccines contained ingredients derived from pigs when the preacher’s point was about what was permissible during an emergency.
