Yong Chee Kong: People Are Scouting Google for This Mysterious Vaccine 'Donor'
After a reported offer of two million doses of CoronaVac vaccines donation to Penang, the Minister of the Science, Technology, and Innovation, immediately dismissed the offer and consider it as bogus; but the name behind the offer 'Yong Chee Kong' quickly became famous in Malaysia overnight.
Google Trends, one of the websites under the tech giant that analyses the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across several languages and regions, shows that the search of 'Yong Chee Kong' suddenly made its way to the top of the popularity list in Malaysia from Wednesday.
The website, Google Trends stated that the searches for the name 'Yong Chee Kong' by Malaysians over the last week started from zero to 100 points in just a span of four hours. The website gathered the details on Wednesday from noon until 4 pm. The said numbers represent the search interest relative to the highest point for the selected region and also time.
Moreover, the 100-point achieved by the 'Yong Chee Kong' search means that it reached the peak popularity of the term, while a value of 50 means that the term corresponds half as popular.
Even the web mapping platform offered by Google, Google Maps, also recorded that people are searching for the address of the personality in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, showed an ordinary double-story terrace house located on a normal street.
According to The Sun, during a press conference on Tuesday, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow claimed that the Health Ministry denied the request of Penang for a private company to sponsor two million vaccines for COVID-19 from China.
After hearing the non-approval, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng then joined in the dispute by convincing Chow to accept the offer regarding the vaccines without any approval from the Federal government and just deal with the decisions' consequences later.
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Aside from his position in the Science and Technology Ministry, Khairy is also the National COVID-19 immunization Programme coordinating minister. The minister stated on Wednesday that the vaccine donation offer to the state government was a bogus, The Strait Times reported.
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Based on Khairy, Chow and Lim made the claim after receiving a letter from 'Yong Chee Kong.' Yong mentioned in the letter that he is a Malaysian working at Xintai Development Enterprise Ltd. which is located in Hong Kong.
In addition, Yong claimed that he had been communicating with the people from Sinovac Biotech and was willing to pay RM8.28mil or two million US dollars as a deposit for the procurement of the vaccine.
But after checking with Sinovac Biotech, Khairy found out that there was no application made to the vaccine procedure regarding the donation which was mentioned in the letter.
Even the company's international sales head Coco Chang confirmed that she had not been contacted by "Yong" in any related matter, but in the letter received by the Penang state government, it was mentioned that 'Yong ' had been in touch with Chang.
Also, Khairy stated that he made a search for Xintai Development Enterprise, but it yielded no results, Malay Mail reported. Chow has since called on the "private company" to show up in order to clear for its name.
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