Thailand to vaccinate schoolchildren aged 5-11
Bangkok (VNA) – Thailand’s Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) has approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5-11.
CCSA spokesman Dr Taweesilp Visanuyothin said on January 20 that the
children will be inoculated with orange-cap formula vaccine from
Pfizer-BioNTech.
The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged 5 to 11,
which comes in a multiple-dose vial with orange cap and a label with orange
border, has been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration.
Three million doses of
Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is expected to arrive in the kingdom on January 26 to
innoculate children aged 5 to 11. The vaccine is part of a 10-million
dose order made previously. After receiving the vaccine, the Thai Ministry of Health
will take a few days to evaluate and test some samples as a safety precaution
before starting the vaccination.
The vaccination programme for
five to 11-year-olds will get underway at the Queen Sirikit National Institute
of Child Health for children with underlying conditions such as asthma and
obesity before moving to other hospitals. The ministry will work with
the Education Ministry to vaccinate all children with underlying health
conditions first.
The ministry has recorded an
increasing infection rate among students since the start of January. Infections
are high among those aged 13-19 and at least one COVID-19 infected student
aged under 18 has died since November. So far, 4.5 million out of five
million teenagers aged 12-18 have received first shots and just over 4 million
have got second jabs.
In a related news, the Thai Ministry of
Health said that the country logged 8,640 new COVID-19 cases and 13 fatalities in
the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of infections since the beginning
of the pandemic to more than 2.3 million cases, with 22,000 deaths./.