BANGKOK: Thailand is speeding up Covid-19 vaccine distribution as preparation for a mass inoculation campaign due to start next week amid efforts to contain the country's worst wave of outbreak so far.
Amount 940,000 doses of vaccines have been distributed to vaccination centres nationwide on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Center for the Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) spokesperson Apisamai Srirangsan said. This came ahead of the mass inoculation campaign, scheduled to start on June 7, as the country aims to vaccinate 70 per cent of its nearly 70 million population by the end of 2021, the Xinhua news agency reported.
On Wednesday, Thailand reported 3,440 new Covid-19 cases, raising its total caseload to 165,462 from less than 30,000 at the beginning of April, when the third wave of outbreak started to spread from the capital Bangkok. By regions, Bangkok still had the largest number of infections, with 680 new cases confirmed over the past 24 hours and 48 active clusters having been reported, according to the CCSA. The country also reported 38 additional fatalities Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 1,107.
Covid Round up: The other worst countries with over 3 million cases are Brazil (16,624,480), France (5,738,641), Turkey (5,256,516), Russia (5,022,881), the UK (4,506,333), Italy (4,220,304), Argentina (3,817,139), Germany (3,692,908), Spain (3,682,778) and Colombia (3,432,422), the CSSE figures showed.
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