National –
A group from the Rural Doctor Society urged the Thai government and the Ministry of Public Health to admit they have an oversupply of Covid-19 vaccines in Thailand and to urgently solve the problem.
The Rural Doctor Society group posted the statement on its Facebook page on Saturday, June 4th, regarding the Public Health Ministry’s recent order of allocating 16.8 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Tambon Health Promoting Hospitals nationwide, stating that it was a careless way to simply litter and burden the destination local hospitals, and that instead, the government should solve the oversupply problem in the central warehouses.
The society mentioned that 1.17 million doses of leftover Sinovac were a waste of transportation costs and a warehouse vacancy as no one wanted to receive the Sinovac shot, even foreign immigrants. The vaccines could also not be used as a booster shot.
9.76 million shots of AstraZeneca are still fully stocked in all warehouses nationwide since they were just allocated in April 2022. All of them were also waiting to be expired because most people wanted to have Pfizer, said the society.
5.86 million doses of Pfizer were the most wanted type of vaccine. However, the vaccination demand has recently decreased, so the allocation at the Tambon Health Promoting Hospitals is over-stocked and waiting to be expired as well.
Moreover, Pfizer vaccines must be well stored at -70 degrees Celsius. If removed from the warehouse at -70 degrees, the purple cap of Pfizer will last only 1 month and the gray cap will last for 2.5 months, which are considered very short.
“As the provincial hospitals do not have such type of -70 degrees refrigerators, the export vaccination from the Public Health Ministry of Public Health is immediately the start of counting down the expiration period. The vaccination allocation this time was basically to put a burden on the provincial levels to destroy the vaccines previously stored at the Ministry,” the status reads.
The group then introduced two suggestions to the Ministry of Public Health for its consideration which are:
1. The government and the Ministry of Public Health should accept the truth that they have ordered the vaccine more than needed. The vaccines are oversupplied. And in order to solve the problem, the Ministry of Public Health has to honestly and fully accept that condition. If the vaccines cannot be donated then they should be destroyed, not transferred to local hospitals.
2. The current vaccination allocation and warehouse management system that are set weekly are already a good system. Local hospitals do not have a vaccination shortage, so the distribution should be as it is.
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