Thailand will receive two million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech amid a new wave of coronavirus infections.
The Public Health Ministry said that the first batch of doses would arrive in the territory in February.
There is also a second group of 800,000 doses that will arrive in March and a last packet of one million doses that Thailand is set to acquire in April.
Health officials of Thailand have been making great efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, especially since they found an outbreak in a seafood and fish market located in Samut Sakhon. This wave of infections has extended to several provinces throughout the country, making the total number of cases rise even more than in the first stage of the pandemic last year.
The initial COVID-19 outbreak reported in Thailand left 1,451 active cases in April 2020, when authorities imposed the strictest lockdown measures and travel restrictions nationwide to curb the increase in cases.
Now, there are 4,022 active coronavirus cases over more than 7000 infections recorded, and 64 confirmed deaths.
It was also reported that the national company Siam Bioscience already started producing AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. This coronavirus vaccine was developed in cooperation with Oxford University and local governments expect to make it available to the public in May.
Besides, Thai authorities said they had set the goal of being able to vaccine half of the population, which is around 33 million people, by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, a private hospital was lately required to withdraw advertising related to the pre-order of COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna, the US biotech company.
While the vaccine has been approved by food and drug official agencies both in Canada and the US, it still needs advertising from the FDA of Thailand.
The country was relatively successful when containing the virus early last year, even though it was the first nation outside China to report a COVID-19 case. However, the new outbreak triggered concerns about having a daily number of infections of 4 or 5 digits.
On Sunday, 315 new coronavirus cases were reported, and 294 of them were local transmissions, bringing the national total to 7,694 infections since the pandemic began.
