Mor Prom Covid-19 vaccine registration Line account scrapped

Less than a month after its not-so-triumphant launch, the Mor Prom Line account for vaccine registration, like so many Covid-19 plans before it, has been scratched. The Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration says the government decided to discontinue to online registration scheme in anticipation of the platform being overwhelmed by coming sign-ups.

The plan is now to keep Mor Prom as a resource exclusively for follow-ups after the first and second vaccine doses. The Line account will still handle side effect reports and vaccine certificates, but no longer process vaccine appointment registrations.

The CCSA now believes that local government should handle vaccine registrations and appointments, calling on provincial authorities in each of Thailand’s 77 provinces to create their own online vaccine registration process in place of Mor Prom.

Bangkok, Phuket and Nontha Buri already have their own online systems in place to handle mass registration for their provinces.

The theory is that different areas have different needs and should allocate their vaccines accordingly. Some provinces have major Covid-19 outbreaks and need to prioritise frontline and at-risk workers for vaccination, while areas with less current infections can focus on injecting elderly and people with health conditions that make them vulnerable.

The CCSA is guaranteeing that any appointments made on Mor Prom by the elderly and those with any of the 7 chronic illnesses that Thailand has designated as high risk will be honoured. Those groups would not have to reapply for new vaccine appointments. But, shortly after announcing that all people can register to get vaccinated through the Line account including foreigners, the government changed its mind and cancelled all plans for national registration.

The plan until today was to amalgamate bookings from the Mor Prom account that was only launched at the start of the month with people who made vaccine appointments by walking into local clinics and hospitals and with health volunteers in their area to create a centralised database of appointments. Though the stated intention was to put vaccination appointments into the hands of provincial authorities, as of now, there is no coherent instructions for anyone seeking to register for a vaccine.

In Thailand so far, just under 1 million people have been fully vaccinated with 2 injections, and 2.16 more have received their first shot only. 8% of those are in the elderly and at-risk category still guaranteed appointments made in Mor Prom. 34% of vaccines were administered in areas with the worst outbreaks, and 57% went to medical and frontline workers continually exposed to Covid-19 patients.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post