BANGKOK: Thailand is studying the possibility of injecting the Coronavirus vaccine under the skin to try to stretch its limited supply, a health official said on Thursday, when the country competed to autoculate a worse epidemic in the middle.
“Our previous experience showed that intradermal injection used 25% of muscle injection, but triggered the same immune level,” Head of the Department of Medical Sciences, Supakit Sirilak told reporters.
Thailand has reported a record of death in recent weeks among nearly 1 million cases.
This has been inoculating 8.3% of the population of more than 66 million in mass vaccination campaigns which began in June in the middle of the battle against the Virulent Alpha and Delta Covid variants.
But despite the manufacturing vaccine for Astrazeneca and ordered quite a different dose of brands to cover the population, Thailand struggled to get supplies quite quickly.
It has even tried to borrow a vaccine from the Himalaya Kingdom Bhutan https://reut.rs/3k8odoe and last month into the world’s first country to mix Chinese Coronavirus vaccines and Western shots.
It has used the Pfizer vaccine and Biontech as a booster for his medical personnel.
If the research confirms intradermal injections effectively, regardless of the brand, Thailand can vaccinate four to five times the number of people with the same number of vaccines, Supakit said.
Astrazeneca and Pfizer did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comments about intradermal injection.