Kingdom 'on track' for June inoculation initiative

The Department of Disease Control has stressed that the kingdom will carry out the national Covid-19 inoculation drive in June as planned, starting with six million locally-produced AstraZeneca vaccines.

AstraZeneca has partnered with Siam Bioscience to manufacture a total of 61 million jabs by the end of this year. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha previously assured the nation that production of the doses is going as planned.

Chawetsan Namwat, director of Division of Disease Control Emergency Situation, said the Health Ministry will not delay the distribution of vaccines to the public.

He said 586,032 AstraZeneca and Sinovac doses have been distributed, and the figure will rise when more vaccines are given to the public en masse.

"We will see more and more people getting the vaccine from June after AstraZeneca sends its vaccines to the department," Dr Chawetsan told the media. "Things are going well with the plan."

From Feb 28 to Thursday, 586,032 doses of AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines were distributed to all 77 provinces, he said.

A total of 510,456 people received their first shot while 75,576 received their second, Dr Chawetsan said.

According to the department, 40.4% of the shots were given to medical staff, 40.3% to people living in high risk areas, 4.4% to people living with non-communicable diseases, 5.1% to people over 60 years old and 9.6% to officials.

Regarding the production of the AstraZeneca vaccines, the company will ship 10 million doses per month from July to November while December will see the last five million jabs.

In other news, Covid-19 screenings will start today at the Bangkok Youth Centre (Thai-Japan) for Social Security Fund members who have registered online.

Tests are open for those who think they are at risk of contracting the coronavirus.

Those eligible can register via https://sso.icntracking.com/icntracking/self_register.php.

Tests will be provided to up to 3,000 people per day.