THE Thai Food and Drug Administration today (May 13) registered the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine in the category of a specially controlled drug as applied by Zuellig Pharma Ltd, Matichon newspaper said.
Deputy government spokesperson Ms. Trisulee Trisoranakul said the vaccine, produced by American biotech company Moderna, will be available for private parties to purchase via the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO).
However the private sector will have to confirm the purchase amount in advance as GPO will not be buying and storing stock lots.
Moderna is quite similar to the Pfizer vaccine — both use what’s known as mRNA technology which, before the pandemic, hadn’t been used in people, a recent ABC report said
Think of them as siblings in the vaccine family, while others like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are more like cousins.
The vaccine is being widely used in the United States, and Moderna is an American company.
More than 140 million doses of the vaccine have been administered over there so far.
It’s a tiny bit different to Pfizer, in that there’s a three-week gap between Pfizer doses, and a four-week gap between Moderna doses.
Health authorities in the US warn of only minor side-effects for the Moderna vaccine, including pain in the arm where the shot is delivered, and things like tiredness, muscle pain, fever and chills.
The Australian government has ordered two different types of the same vaccine.
Ten million doses will be the current vaccine, and will be delivered towards the end of this year.
A million of those should arrive around September, and the other nine million between October and December.
But the other 15 million are going to be booster shots — an updated form of the vaccine, targeting variants of Covid-19.
They’ll be rolled out in 2022.
The Australian government wants Moderna to be the “foundation” of its booster shot programme, so it may be rolled out more widely in future.
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Top: A doctor holds an injection with the new Moderna vaccine. Photo: Marco Verch, professional photographer (CC BY 2.0)
Home Page: Mass vaccination campaigns with Moderna vaccine. Photo: Marco Verch, professional photographer (CC BY 2.0)
