An open letter to the people of Thailand: AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca has increased vaccine production and import doses from other supply chains in a bid to help Thailand overcome the Covid-19 crisis, Managing Director of AstraZeneca Thailand James Teague said on Tuesday.
Details of the open letter are as follows:
Dear friends in Thailand,
As AstraZeneca’s representative here, I am writing to share the latest action we have taken to help Thailand overcome the difficult and ongoing challenges of Covid-19.
We have increased local production by 20%.
In July I wrote an open letter to update you on how we were leaving no stone unturned to accelerate the supply of our Covid-19 vaccine, including efforts to optimise the production process.
Since then, in partnership with our local manufacturing partner, Siam Bioscience, we have been successful in increasing each manufactured batch size by 20%, from 580,000 doses per batch to on average 700,000.
This means more doses than anticipated are being produced in Thailand to help vaccinate people across the country and region.
In October we supplied 10.5 million doses to Thailand, taking the total supplied to date to 35.1 million, as part of our overall commitment to deliver 61 million, ahead of a newer agreement to supply an additional 60 million in 2022.
In addition to increased local manufacturing capacity, we will import doses from other supply chains.
In response to the Delta outbreak, another commitment I made in July was to search the 20+ supply chains in our worldwide manufacturing network, to find additional vaccines for Southeast Asia, including Thailand.
We will soon have several of our global supply chains providing doses to Southeast Asia over the remainder of this year, ensuring accelerated supply for each country, including Thailand. Siam Bioscience is forecast to continue exceeding original manufacturing estimates, alongside the import of additional doses.
Spurred on by the heart and strength that has been shown across Thailand during this extremely difficult time, our efforts to provide more vaccine doses faster does not stop here. Everyone at AstraZeneca will continue working to accelerate vaccine supply wherever possible to support Thailand’s pandemic recovery.
We will continue to keep you informed on our relentless pursuit and progress.
Yours sincerely,
James Teague
Managing Director, AstraZeneca Thailand
