Thailand to be Southeast Asia production base for Oxford’s Covid-19 vaccine

Thailand is planned to be the Southeast Asia production base for Oxford University’s Covid-19 vaccine. The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra-Zeneca is working with Oxford to make the vaccine, if and when it is approved, globally available and Siam Bioscience will manufacture the vaccine in Thailand.

Thailand is planned to be the production base for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, which includes Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.

Out of the 1 trillion baht allocated to public health in the 2021 fiscal budget, 40 billion baht has been set aside to for Covid-19 related measures, like production of a vaccine, according deputy government spokesperson Traisuree Taisranakul. Back in July, the Thai government announced it was setting aside 600 million baht to purchase supplies for the Oxford vaccine.

“The vaccine production of Oxford University is in constant development and has made great progress, with human tests being conducted.”

In earlier report, the British Embassy in Bangkok said if the vaccine is successful, it will be available to the Thai population by the first half of 2021. A Covid-19 vaccine is seen as a lifeline for Thailand’s tourism-dependant economy that has been battered by the pandemic’s travel restrictions. Some have said the economy won’t pick back up again until a vaccine is available.

The caveat on all the excitement about a Covid-19 vaccine is that there has never been a successful development of a coronavirus vaccine. But the worldwide economic impact is spurring on significant efforts to find one ASAP that will hopefully prove successful in preventing Covid-19 infection.

SOURCE: Nation Thailand