Amidst the waves of the Covid 19 pandemic going across the world and the variants, Thailand and Indonesia have said that they will be giving booster shots to the healthcare workers. However, this is for the people who received the Chinese vaccine, Sinovac.
Healthcare Workers Who Received Sinovac Will Get Pfizer or BioNTech Vaccine As Booster Dose
Thailand is the latest country to be losing confidence in the Chinese vaccine Sinovac against the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid 19. Following this, the government has reportedly announced that the healthcare workers who received Sinovac will now be receiving Pfizer or BioNTech, or AstraZeneca vaccines as booster doses against Covid 19 and its variants.
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Thailand’s health ministry said that the ones who have received only one dose of Sinovac would receive AstraZeneca as their second dose.
Even though the WHO had warned against mixing vaccines, the Thailand ministry defended their decision regarding the same. They said that with the rising cases of Covid 19 across the country, they cannot wait 12 weeks for the booster dose. Following this, they have reduced the 12 weeks gap period to 6 weeks.
They said that in the future if there are better vaccines, they will manage the situation better.
Thailand Expresses Apprehensions Towards Chinese Vaccine Sinovac
The decision comes after Thailand started to show apprehensions against Sinovac. There were concerns if the Chinese vaccines would work well enough to protect the medical workers against the Delta variant which was first detected in India. It is said to be more contagious than the earlier versions of the virus. The strain has currently spread across 98 countries.
At the same time, Indonesia last week said that they would offer the medical worker’s booster doses from the Moderna. This comes after around 90 percent of the country’s medical staff have received two doses of the Sinovac vaccine and hundreds have fallen ill from the Covid 19 infection. This further reduced the medical manpower amid the rise in the number of cases.
