Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Friday that the ministry aimed to vaccinate children aged 12-18 years against Covid-19 with the Pfizer vaccine, which is expected to arrive in the fourth quarter of the year
The Department of Disease Control signed an initial contract with Pfizer on Thursday, which allows Pfizer to submit documents to register the vaccine with the Food and Drug Administration.
The ministry expects to buy 20 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine within this year.
“The DDC is now working with schools to set up vaccination units and provide jabs to students,” said Anutin.
“It is estimated that there are about 5 million children in this age bracket. The 20 million doses that we will buy should easily cover this target group.
“The manufacturer of Sinovac vaccine is planning to register the vaccine for use in children aged over three years,” Anutin said. “Once the registration is completed, we would immediately inoculate children in this age group as we would already have the vaccine in stock,” he added.
When asked if the delivery of AstraZeneca vaccine to Thailand would be affected as the company has said that it would deliver vaccines manufactured in Thailand also to other countries in Southeast Asia, Anutin replied:
The company is under contract with the Thai government to deliver the vaccines on time. We should start asking such questions only when they fail to adhere to the schedule.
In fact, we should be glad that a product from Thailand could help other countries.”
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