Thailand has started its COVID-19 vaccination campaign amid concerns over the supply of doses, which are mainly being produced locally by a royal-owned company that has no prior experience of making vaccines.
Thailand aims to vaccinate 70 percent of its population before the end of the year and it is relying primarily on AstraZeneca doses produced by Siam Bioscience, a company owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
The company is also due to supply vaccines to eight other nations in the region.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The Thai government, which is struggling to contain the nation’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began, has faced growing criticism for being too dependent on one supplier and for a sluggish vaccine rollout.
As of Saturday, about 4 percent of the population had received at least one vaccine dose.
On Monday morning, 986 vaccination centers were opened across the nation and 143,000 people were vaccinated within two hours, officials said, mostly older people and people with underlying health conditions.
“The government will ensure that everyone is vaccinated,” Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, said on national television.
Frustration over the speed of the rollout has grown as new, more infectious variants have spread in prisons, factories and densely populated areas of Bangkok. While Thailand had recorded fewer than 29,000 cases by the start of April, its cumulative caseload has since risen to 179,886.
The Thai government has stopped short of imposing a full lockdown, but has shut schools and encouraged people to work from home where possible.
Anucha Apisarnthanarak, head of the infectious diseases division at Thammasat University, said that the nation’s vaccination target was ambitious and would be difficult to achieve by the end of the year.
It could take between nine and 18 months to vaccinate 50 million people, he said, “depending on how quickly they run the program and how aggressively they do it.”
Including private hospitals in the rollout could reduce that time, he added.
Officials plan to administer 6 million doses this month, including some Chinese-made Sinovac doses, but concerns over supplies grew last week after several hospitals postponed appointments, stating that they did not have enough vaccine doses.
One hospital group said the delay would affect 40,000 people.
The Philippines also confirmed to Reuters that delivery of the first batches of a promised 17 million doses of vaccine had been delayed by several weeks and reduced in size.
It is not clear to what extent other nations in the region might be affected.
Malaysian Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah said on Monday that the nation’s vaccination plan was still on schedule.
Indonesian Ministry of Health vaccine spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi said that no information on the delivery schedule was available.
Siam Bioscience did not respond to a request for comment.
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