Thailand is waiting for its manufacturing slots to produce candidate vaccines for human trials, expected to begin by the end of this year.
As the vaccine production capacities of factories overseas are overwhelmed, local researchers are waiting for production of vaccine candidates before they could start the first phase of human trials, said Kiart Rakrungtham, director of the COVID-19 Vaccine Development Project of the Vaccine Research Centre, Chulalongkorn University.
The country is on the right track to go ahead with plans for local production, transfer of technology from overseas and it also set aside a budget for the purchase of vaccines, he said after the Cabinet approved 100 billion of budget on Tuesday for vaccine development and preparation for technology transfer.
Globally, seven candidate vaccines are currently in the process of human trials. One of them is likely to succeed by the beginning of next year, he added.
Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Minister, Anutin Charnvirakul said that development of Covid-19 vaccine would make more progress after the Cabinet allocated 400 million baht for Chulalongkorn University for vaccine research and development works.
Another 600 million baht will be used for the planned technology transfer in production of vaccine, being developed by the University of Oxford and Astra Zeneca.
Thailand has no local transmission for about three months. The Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration today reported one more Covid-19 case in state quarantine, raising the total cases to 3,403. The new case arrived from India.
Of that number, 3,237 patients have recovered and the death toll stood at 58. (TNA)
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