Over 4 million people vaccinated in lead-up to June 7 campaign

But not all have yet had both doses of their vaccines.

As Thailand ramps up to finally get its mass vaccination campaign underway, over 4 million people have been at least partially vaccinated so far. The most recent data reports that 4,142,994 people have received at least one vaccine in Thailand.

Our World in Data statistics last updated 2 days ago reports a total of 3.61 million doses administered and 1.1 million people fully vaccinated, meaning that in the last 48 hours more than half a million people received jabs. Stats from the end of May also report 1.1 million fully vaccinated people, but just shy of 2.5 million vaccines administered total, indicating that Thailand has given 1.1 million jabs in the past week.

The 4.1 million vaccines put Thailand 43rd in the world for vaccination, just ahead of Singapore and just behind Peru. Globally 2.09 billion people have been vaccinated, with Asia accounting for 1.17 billion of those. The US has the most vaccinations with 299 million, followed by India’s 223 million. For the curious, Vanuatu is the tiny nation with the least vaccines of the countries with reported data, having given only 270 jabs.

In Thailand, reports show that 90,917 people were given their first vaccine yesterday. Additionally, nearly as manly people are fully vaccinated, completing their 2-jab vaccination yesterday, with 90,438 being administered their second shot.

The climbing numbers are a promising and welcome sign that vaccines are finally available and being administered in a country once admired for its early Covid-19 handling, but now often criticised for its slow and ever-changing vaccination rollout. Over the last few days, 1.8 million AstraZeneca vaccines were delivered, the first batch of jabs produced locally by Siam Bioscience. Sinovac is set to deliver 1.5 million more vaccines in the next few days as well.

But provinces such as Lampang and Loei have seen setbacks, with vaccine shortages delaying their appointments to get vaccinated. Loei’s governor announced that the province is scheduled to receive just 600 vaccines a week in the Thai government’s rationing plans.

The official mass vaccination drive is scheduled to begin tomorrow, with 3.3 million jabs distributed to Thailand’s 77 provinces. Priority is being given to the provinces most affected by Covid-19 outbreaks now, as well as economically and touristically vital provinces like Phuket, which is one step closer to a guaranteed July 1 reopening.

Foreigners have often been the subject of an on-again-off-again rollercoaster of whether or not they will be given access to vaccines, whether they will be free or paid, and whether they will have to wait until after Thais are vaccinated. Now the good news looks like they will be able to get vaccinated alongside Thais from tomorrow.