Thailand, Vietnam get first COVID vaccines
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand received yesterday its first 200,000 doses of Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac, the country’s first batch of coronavirus vaccines, with inoculations set to begin in a few days.
Vietnam, on the other hand, received the first batch of 117,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine yesterday ahead of the planned rollout of the Southeast Asian country’s vaccination program from next month.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is expected to be among the first to receive the vaccine this weekend.
Most doses have been reserved for frontline medical workers.
”Thank you to the People’s Republic of China for delivering the vaccine this month and subsequent months,” Prayuth said on the tarmac at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, where a refrigerated container bearing the flags of the two countries was lowered from a Thai Airways plane.
Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul earlier this week said 117,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine would also arrive and that Prayuth would be among the first recipients.
Thailand is expecting to take delivery of a further 1.8 doses of CoronaVac in March and April, to be given mainly to health workers and at-risk groups.
The country has so far been spared of the kind of epidemic seen elsewhere, with just over 25,000 infections overall.
The vaccine’s arrival comes amid some public criticism of the government and accusations it has been too slow to secure the vaccines. Its mass immunization campaign, which aims to administer 10 million doses a month, is slated to begin in June, using 26 million shots of AstraZeneca vaccines produced by local firm Siam Bioscience. It has also reserved a further 35 million doses of the vaccine.
The government has said it plans to vaccinate more than half the adult population this year.
“We will procure more as we produce them so there is enough to create herd immunity in our country,” Prayuth said.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the vaccines, which arrived at Ho Chi Minh City on a flight from South Korea, will be used to inoculate more than 50,000 people who are seen as high risk, the government said in a statement.
Deputy health minister, Truong Quoc Cuong, was at the airport to meet the consignment of vaccines flown in from Seoul, according to media.
South Korea’s SK Bioscience has a plant that has been approved to manufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The batch is part of 30 million doses that the Vietnam Vaccine Joint Stock Co., a company set up to handle vaccine import and distribution, will bring in, the government said.
Vietnam said on Tuesday health workers, diplomats and military personnel would be among the first to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Southeast Asian country with a population of 98 million has said it will receive 60 million vaccine doses this year, including half under the WHO-led COVAX scheme.
Vietnam was lauded globally for containing the virus for months using mass testing and strict quarantining, though has faced a recent new wave of infections.
The country has recorded 811 new COVID-19 cases since the latest outbreak started last month or about a third of its overall caseload of 2,403 infections since infections were first detected a year ago. Vietnam has reported 35 deaths due to the virus.