After several countries such as the UK, Russia and China developed vaccines for the Covid-19 outbreak, it is now our turn to our neighboring country, Thailand, to do the same.
The Covid-19 vaccine will be tested on humans in late April or early May after proving successful in tests conducted on rats and monkeys last year.
According to the Director of Chulalongkorn Hospital, Professor Dr Suttipong Wacharasindhu, the RNA messenger (mRNA) vaccine, developed by Chulalongkorn University, has proven to be able to build immunity to the virus that causes Covid-19.
"The first phase of the human test will include 72 volunteers at Chulalongkorn Hospital while the second phase will involve 300 to 600 volunteers at Chulalongkorn Hospital and Mahidol University," he said as reported by Bernama yesterday.
Meanwhile, the Chief Researcher of the Center for Excellence in Vaccine Research and Development at Chulalongkorn University, Kiat Ruxrungtham, said the vaccine, dubbed ‘ChulaCov19’, would be produced in California with a production capacity of up to five million doses by the end of this year.
He said the vaccine will be produced locally after that by the Thai company, Bionet Asia Co.
Thailand intends to vaccinate 50% of its population by the end of this year. The first batch of 200,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine from China is scheduled to arrive on February 24.
To date, Thailand has reportedly ordered a total of 61 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine and another two million doses of Sinovac Biotech from China.
