In an attempt to get about 16 million people their booster COVID-19 vaccine shots, sub-district (Tambon) health promotion hospitals will provide free walk-in vaccination services to members of the public and will arrange for staff to conduct group vaccinations at factories and offices where many people want to be inoculated.

Director of the Division of Communicable Diseases Dr. Vichan Pawan said today (Monday) that the Public Health Ministry has made it as convenient as possible for the public, including the elderly and children over 6 years old, to get vaccinated, in an attempt to reach the target of 60% of the Thai population being inoculated with booster shots, as part of the plan for COVID-19 to be reclassified as an endemic disease in Thailand.

About 56.8 million people in Thailand have received at least one shots of vaccine against COVID-19 vaccine to date. A total of 28.5 million booster shots have been administered, according to the Department of Disease control. In some provinces, Dr. Vichan said that less than 20% of the population have received booster jabs.

He disclosed that 16.8 million doses of Sinovac, AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines are to be delivered to provincial hospitals and provincial health offices, which will be responsible for distributing them to sub-district health promotion hospitals, the amounts of which will depend on the cold storage capacities at each hospital and their capability to carry out the vaccinations.

With vaccine stocks at their disposal, he said officials at the sub-district hospitals will be able to manage the vaccines more effectively, because they won’t have to wait for vaccines to be sent from provincial storage facilities, as was previously the case.

Source: Thai Public Broadcasting Service