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BANGKOK: Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and members of his cabinet on Friday (March 12) canceled plans to receive AstraZeneca vaccine injections after the country reportedly delayed use of the vaccines. of blood clots in some European nations, a health official said.
At a Health Ministry press conference, Prasit Watanapa, dean of the Siriraj Hospital Faculty of Medicine, confirmed that the launch would be delayed after a suspension of inoculations with the vaccine in Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
Denmark suspended injections for two weeks after a 60-year-old woman, who received an injection of AstraZeneca from the same batch used in Austria, formed a blood clot and died, Danish health authorities said.
His response was also prompted by reports “of possible serious side effects” from other European countries.
Norway and Iceland said the suspension was a precaution.
“Although the quality of AstraZeneca is good, some countries have asked for a delay,” Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, advisor to Thailand’s COVID-19 vaccine committee, told a news conference.
“We’re going to delay (too).”
Thailand was in a position to suspend the deployment of security investigations because it had controlled a second wave of coronavirus cases, said Kiattiphum Wongjit, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Public Health.
Yong Poonvorawan, a virology expert, said at the press conference that the investigation would also check whether any problems could be related to particular batches in Europe and said that the vaccines supplied to Thailand were manufactured in Asia.
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Thailand has so far recorded just over 26,500 coronavirus infections and 85 deaths in a population of 66.5 million. A second wave that began in December now records fewer than 100 new infections a day.
Thailand’s overall vaccination strategy relies heavily on AstraZeneca, which will be produced locally by a company owned by the country’s king, with 61 million doses reserved for the Thai population.
However, the locally made AstraZeneca won’t be ready until at least June, and Thailand started last week with limited inoculations with imported doses of the Sinovac vaccine.
Thailand has so far administered about 40,000 of the 200,000 recently received doses of CoronaVac from Sinovac, Kiattiphum said.
The country also received 117,300 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine last week, which the prime minister and his cabinet were due to receive on Friday.
Kiattiphum said the doses imported from Thailand were not from the same batch that is being investigated in Europe.
“We got this from the global supply and there is no report of this (problem) in Asia,” he said.
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