Siam Bioscience declares AstraZeneca vaccine ready to deliver

Neill FrondePublished: 16:46, 03 June 2021| Updated: 16:59, 03 June 2021

272 1 minute read

Siam Bioscience declares AstraZeneca vaccine ready to deliver — Flickr Marco Verch edited

PHOTO: AstraZeneca produced locally by Siam Bioscience will start distribution this week. (via Flickr Marco Verch)

Much anticipated news came from Siam Bioscience yesterday, as the company announced that they are ready to begin deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the Thai government. The company was scheduled to provide over 60 million vaccines over the course of the year.

The welcomed announcement came amidst frequent reporting of problems and delays in the production of the Covid-19 vaccine in Thailand. In early April it was speculated that locally produced vaccines would be available by July. By the end of that month, estimates looked hopefully at June as a possibility for rollout.

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Speculation of further delays came just yesterday when the Philippines announced that they had been informed that the first shipment of 1.3 million AstraZeneca vaccines they had ordered from Siam Bioscience would be pushed back from the third week of June to sometime in the middle of July. Perhaps in hasty response to this news which spawned a rash of public doubt in Thailand’s vaccine rollout timeline, Siam Bioscience, a company under the Crown Property Bureau that manages the monarchy’s assets, announced that deliveries would begin this week on vaccines.

The domestically manufactured vaccines will be handed over to the Public Health Ministry for distribution. The total number of vaccines expected in the first delivery was not specified, but Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul recently stated that 6 million AstraZeneca jabs would be received throughout the month of June.

In a statement to the press, Siam Bioscience proudly announced that Thailand’s first locally produced vaccines were ready to be delivered. Once manufacturing is producing vaccine loads regularly, the company will begin shipping vaccines to other nearby countries in Southeast Asia, according to Siam Bioscience.

The company held a launch ceremony along with AstraZeneca yesterday to celebrate the first shipment from the Siam Bioscience factory in the Bang Yai district of Nonthaburi near Bangkok.

SOURCE: The Phuket News

Neill Fronde

Neill is a journalist from the United States with 10+ years broadcasting experience and national news and magazine publications. He graduated with a degree in journalism and communications from the University of California and has been living in Thailand since 2014.