Bumrungrad scheduling Moderna

Bumrungrad International Hospital (BH) plans to better immunise hospital personnel and patients against highly contagious variants of the Covid-19 virus by starting the booking process for Moderna vaccines today.

Three target groups can make bookings via the hospital’s website from today: the unvaccinated; those who received two doses of Sinovac; and those who received one AstraZeneca shot.

“BH expects Moderna vaccines will be delivered between November 2021 and March 2022,” said BH chief executive and pharmacist Artirat Charukitpipat.

BH declined to reveal how many doses of Moderna vaccine it had purchased through the Private Hospital Association, which imported the vaccines via the Government Pharmaceutical Organization.

The association placed an order to procure 9.5 million doses, but the manufacturer can sell only 5 million doses because of limited supply to serve huge global demand.

“We managed to secure less than a million doses, which is lower than our target,” said Ms Artirat.

BH plans to sell two doses of Moderna vacines to people who have never received Covid-19 vaccines, with first priority given to BH patients.

Those vaccinated with two doses of Sinovac can receive an additional shot of the Moderna vaccine as a booster to increase immunity against more virulent strains of Covid-19.

Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology to trigger immunity, which is regarded as being more effective than the traditional approach of using inactivated virus to build an immune response.

For people who had one dose of AstraZeneca, they can also receive the Moderna vaccine as the second shot or go ahead and get the second dose of AstraZeneca and wait for a “secondgeneration of Moderna” as a booster, said Ms Artirat.

The new Moderna vaccine is being developed into a multi-virus variant vaccine with better ability to fight many virus strains.