Thailand’s three locally-developed COVID-19 vaccine including one using messenger RNA (mRNA) are expected to be available next year.
The government’s Thai Khu Fah Facebook page said the three home-grown vaccine candidates had showed promising results.
The first two vaccines are CU-Cov19 (mRNA) developed by Chulalongkorn University with University of Pennsylvania, and the HXP-GPO Vac (inactivated) developed by the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation, Mahidol University with the United States’ Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH).
The third is Baiya SARS-CoV-2 VAX1 (a plant-based subunit vaccine) developed by Baiya Phytopharm Co., Ltd and Chulalongkorn University.
Meanwhile, Thailand today signed a COVID-19 vaccine procurement contract for 20 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
In a statement, Pfizer and BioNTech said the mRNA vaccines will arrive in fourth quarter this year.
“We are thrilled to have signed this important agreement with the Thai government as part of our shared commitment to be part of the country’s efforts to drive down COVID-19 infections,” said Country Manager of Pfizer (Thailand) Ltd. and Indochina Deborah Seifert,
To date, Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved six COVID-19 vaccines namely Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Sinopharm and Pfizer-BioNTech.
However, there are only three vaccines in use in Thailand – Sinovac and Sinopharm (both inactivated virus vaccines) and AstraZeneca (viral vector vaccine). There is no mRNA vaccine in use in Thailand yet.
Over the last 24 hours, Thailand recorded 11,305 new COVID-19 cases and 80 fatalities bringing the total infections in the kingdom to 426,475 and 3,502 deaths to date.
Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) said of the new cases, a total of 11,291 were local transmissions including 2,097 via active case detection including 595 inmates. There were also 14 imported cases.
CCSA said the new fatalities involved 43 women and 37 men aged between 14 and 94 years old, including two Myanmar nationals, one Laotian and one French.
Bangkok topped the list with the highest number of cases at 2,764 new cases and 41 fatalities.
Source: BERNAMA News Agency