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Government Approves Plan To Buy 20 Million Pfizer Vaccines

The Thai cabinet has announced that they plan to sign a supply agreement to allow the country to obtain 20 million doses of the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine later this year.

The move comes after many citizens had been voicing their opinions that the government should be procuring messenger RNA (mRNA) -based vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna. However, the budget for acquiring Pfizer’s shots batches was not disclosed.

Furthermore, those Pfizer vaccines that Thailand will order soon are unlikely to be the first delivered.

But officials from the Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) previously said the United States would donate 1.5 million doses to the kingdom this month and next.

At the meeting held on Tuesday, the cabinet also approved a contract to import 10.9 million doses of the Sinovac BioNTech jab.

After the meeting, Prime Minister’s spokesman Anucha Burapachasri stated that the government would get 6.1 billion baht from borrowings under executive decrees to purchase more Sinovac shots.

Moreover, the cabinet authorized the Government Pharmaceutical Organization to purchase the Moderna vaccine from Zuellig Pharma Ltd on behalf of private hospitals.

Udom Kachintorn, an adviser to the CCSA, later said that the mRNA-based vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, would be given to about 700,000 healthcare workers as booster vaccines after the group was fully inoculated with Sinovac shots a few weeks ago.

The jabs would be then used to vaccinate those at risk, including the elderly and people with seven underlying conditions.

Besides, Covid-19 vaccines will be free to people, except for those available in private hospitals, the PM’s spokesman Anucha Burapachasri explained.