Nahlah Elkudssiah Ismail

Title : Malaysian Journey of COVID-19 Vaccine Administration

Abstract:

The first case of COVID-19 was reported in Malaysia on 25^th January 2020. Since then, multiple series of COVID-19 waves occurred with different SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern dominating. The pandemic COVID-19 hit Malaysia with total cases of 3,528,557 and R_T value of 1.02 were reported on 4^th March 2022. To curb the pandemic, National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK/NIP) that began on 24^th February 2021 aimed to build herd immunity among Malaysian residents in less than a year. Based on open data sources of collaboration between COVID-19 Immunisation Task Force, Ministry of Health (MOH) Malaysia and the Open Data Community, till 4^th March 2022, total 67,576,623 doses of vaccine COVID-19 been administered among Malaysian populations of children (5 – 11 years old), adolescent (12 – 17 years old), adult (18 – 64 years old) and geriatric (≥ 65 years old). Five main vaccines of different pharmaceutical companies involved namely Comirnaty® and Tozinameran® of Pfizer-BioNTech, CoronaVac® of Sinovac, ChAdOx1-S® of Oxford-AstraZeneca, Convidecia® of CanSino, and COVILO® of Sinopharm. The National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) under the MOH Malaysia persistently monitoring safety risk of all aforementioned registered vaccines in Malaysia administered as dose 1, dose 2, dose 3 and/or booster accordingly, via adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) reports received. In total, 25,610 AEFI reports received for evaluation. The rate of AEFI reporting via NPRA AEFI system was 379 AEFI reports per 1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses. Malaysia is currently in the verge of transition period between pandemic to endemic COVID-19 state, by “living with COVID-19” begin 1^st April 2022.

Biography:

Prof. Dr. Nahlah Elkudssiah Ismail studied Bachelor of Pharmacy (Hons) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia and graduated as R.Ph. in 2000. She then joined the research group of Prof. Henry Chrystyn at the School of Pharmacy and Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation (IPI), University of Bradford, United Kingdom (UK). She received her PhD degree in 2005 at the same institution. After 8 years working in Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia, she was promoted the position of an Associate Professor at Lincoln University College Malaysia in 2015. Following year, she was appointed to a Professor in Clinical Pharmaceutics at MAHSA University. Currently, she is the Council Member of Malaysian Academy of Pharmacy. She is also enthusiastically advocating vaccination against COVID-19 by becoming one of the healthcare professional frontliners at various vaccine administration centres (VACs) for populations of adult, geriatric, adolescent and children. She has published more than 250 publications including research journal articles, proceedings, chapters in books, books and magazine.