Ministry aims to vaccinate 300,000 medical professionals within this week
The Public Health Ministry aims to provide 600,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses to 300,000 medical professionals, who work in close contact with the patients, by April 25 to cope with rising infections, permanent secretary Dr Kiattiphum Wongrajit said on Wednesday.
“The vaccine will come from the 1 million doses of Sinovac vaccine that we received recently. This will drive up the total to more than 1 million doses since we started inoculations in late February,” he said.
“On April 24 another 500,000 doses will arrive. The ministry is also finalising a deal to import 1 million more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.”
Kiattiphum said the ministry has also ordered 2 million Favipiravir tablets after the number of domestic infections has been rising.
“Before the new wave we had around 700,000 tablets in stock, which was enough to treat patients back then,” he said. “However, the new wave has driven up demand to over 20,000 tablets per day, prompting the ministry to order more tablets. We are also looking into buying the Remdesivir drug to inject those in risky groups.”
The Public Health Ministry urged hospitals to reserve an adequate supply of medicines and equipment as the treatment of patients infected with the UK B 1.1.7 Covid-19 strain will require at least 14 days of continuous treatment instead of 10 days compared to patients with the normal strain.
