Thailand will vaccinate AstraZeneca individuals who received the first dose of Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine.
According to Reuters news agency, the country’s health authorities are aiming to increase protection.
The move is the first announced combination of a Chinese vaccine and a vaccine developed in the West, where a new Thai preliminary study has raised questions about the long-term protection of CoronaVac.
“This is to improve protection against the delta variant and build a high level of immunity against disease,” Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters, adding that the second dose of AstraZeneca would come three or four weeks after the first Sinovac injection.
There have been no specific studies on the combination of Sinovac and AstraZeneca that has been released, but a growing number of countries are looking into combining different vaccines or giving a third booster dose amid concerns that new, more contagious variants may escape from approved vaccines.
The announcement comes a day after the Thai Ministry of Health announced that 618 medical workers out of 677,348 people who received two doses of the Sinovac vaccine contracted the virus from April to July. A nurse died.
Neighboring Indonesia has also reported revolutionary infections among medical workers and frontline workers who have been fully vaccinated with the coronavirus.
Thailand is now planning to give booster doses of the imported RNA vaccine to frontline employees who received CoronaVac, as the local manufacture of the AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been made.
On Monday, a preliminary Thai study of 700 medical workers indicated that the protection rate for CoronaVac as measured by antibody level ranged between 60% and 70% in the first 60 days after the second dose, but the rate has steadily decreased over time. halved every 40 days.
AstraZeneca declined to comment on Thailand’s decision, saying only that vaccination policy is a matter for each country to decide. Sinovac did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
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