BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand will import the first doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Asia after Europe imposed export controls, the country’s health minister said on Thursday.
The European Union (EU) last week set export restrictions on vaccines from the bloc until March to ensure it will secure supplies it has bought in advance, including vaccines from AstraZeneca Plc.
Thailand will still import the first 50,000 of the 150,000 “starting doses” of the AstraZeneca vaccine later this month, but not from Europe as previously planned, said Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul.
“The producer will get the vaccine from another supply chain outside the EU,” Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters.
“It will be from somewhere in Asia,” he said without giving more details because he said that otherwise there was a risk of another intervention to safeguard supplies.
South Korea and India are among the countries in Asia that currently produce the AstraZeneca vaccine.
China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd will also deliver the first 200,000 of two million doses of its vaccine that Thailand ordered in late February, added Anutin.
Thailand’s vaccination strategy depends mainly on AstraZeneca vaccines produced by local manufacturer Siam Bioscience, owned by Thailand’s king, Maha Vajiralongkorn.
The 26 million doses to be produced by the company should be used in vaccines starting in June. Thailand plans to inoculate people with five million doses every month thereafter, Anutin said.
Thailand ordered an additional 35 million doses of vaccines from AstraZeneca, but Anutin said on Thursday that a contract for the volume was not signed.
Early on Thursday, Thailand reported 809 new cases of coronavirus and no additional deaths, its task force COVID-19 said.
New infections took the grand total to 22,058, with deaths remaining at 79.
(Reporting by Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Editing by Ed Davies)