Thailand's National Vaccine Institute said on Tuesday that local COVID-19 vaccine's production is scheduled to begin in mid-2021.
The COVID-19 production technology will be transferred from the AstraZeneca-Oxford University alliance, the institute's director Nakorn Premsri said.
The director said Thailand had participated in the alliance's vaccine development project, which had confirmed the average efficacy of 70 percent for their ongoing third-phase trial.
Thai pharmaceutical company Siam Bioscience is also in talks with AstraZeneca about local production in Thailand with an annual capacity of 180 to 200 million doses for use in Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations, Nakorn said.
Thailand's Ministry of Public Health's Disease Control Department added that the National Vaccine Committee would decide on the first groups of vaccine recipients next month.
Basically, the first group of recipients usually go to frontline healthcare workers and also people with high risks of transmission, said the department.
