KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 21 — Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said Malaysians aged 60 and above can now volunteer for the third phase of clinical trials of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine made by the Institute of Medical Biology Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (IMBCAMS).

In a Facebook post last night, Dr Noor Hisham shared a message from the Clinical Trials Centre under the National Health Institute of the Ministry of Health, which said the trials will be conducted at the centre in Hospital Ampang.

"We have vacancies for volunteer slots for those aged 60 above for our study titled ‘Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo Controlled Phase III Clinical Trial for the Evaluation of Efficacy and Safety of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine, Inactivated (Vero Cell) in Healthy Population Aged 18 Years and Above in Malaysia’,” read the message.

The IBMCAMS is among the many SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes the Covid-19 disease) vaccines that have been placed under the study of the Health Ministry, including the Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines.

Malaysia is set to receive its first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines at 10am today, numbering 312,390 doses.

Another batch of vaccines, of the Sinovac variant, will be arriving on February 27.

Previously Dr Noor Hisham had debunked news that vaccines made in China are unsafe to use, saying that the East Asian nation has a successful track record in manufacturing vaccines for diseases other than Covid-19.

He said China had previously come out with prequalified vaccines for the World Health Organization (WHO), for example, vaccines for influenza, polio, hepatitis A and Japanese encephalitis and that they have experience with manufacturing vaccines.