Thailand will launch its Covid-19 immunisation programme on Monday, focused mostly on the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab produced at Siam Bioscience, a company owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn that has never previously produced a vaccine.
The rollout is a high-stakes one for both Prayuth Chan-ocha’s government, which faces growing anger from the public and business over delays in making vaccines available, and AstraZeneca, which chose Thailand as its south-east Asian production hub.
Siam Bioscience will produce 200m doses of the coronavirus jab, including for export.
Thailand is contending with a surge in infections of about 2,000-4,000 reported new cases a day — the highest since the start of the pandemic.
Like its regional peers Vietnam and Taiwan, the kingdom brought reported Covid-19 infections down to zero in 2020. The spike in cases has been blamed on more…
