The Food and Drug Administration of Thailand announced it had approved the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for emergency use. mRNA vaccines work by instructing cells in the body to make a protein, known as a spike protein, that triggers an immune response to the covid-19 virus.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is highly effective against the Delta variant of COVID-19, a Pfizer official in Israel said
First identified in India, Delta is becoming the globally dominant variant of the coronavirus, according to the World Health Organization.
Other recent studies have also shown the covid-19 vaccine is likely to provide high protection against the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
The FDA has now approved 6 Covid-19 vaccines for use in Thailand. In addition to the Pfizer vaccine, the others are China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, AstraZeneca, the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and a second mRNA vaccine, Moderna.
Yesterday, it emerged that only 5 million doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine have been ordered, half the number originally promised. The discrepancy came to light when a Thai TV celebrity, Sorayuth Suthassanachinda, took to Facebook to point out that the original pledge had been that 10 million doses of coronavirus vaccine would be ordered and distributed to private hospitals. The Government Pharmaceutical Organisation is facilitating procurement through importer Zuellig Pharma.
Meanwhile, Thailand has placed an order for 20 million Pfizer doses which are expected to arrive by the end of the year.
Thailand is racing to secure vaccines for its mass immunisation campaign that started on Monday, two months after it was hit by its biggest coronavirus outbreak so far, driven by highly contagious variants.
The programme had relied heavily on its reserved 61 million doses of locally made AstraZeneca vaccines, but the government has tried to diversify its sources to meet its target of acquiring 100 million doses by year-end.
About 4.1 million of Thailand’s more than 66 million people have so far received the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.