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COVID-19 pandemic likely to continue for at least 3 years, says Thai vaccine expert

12 December 2020 06:31 (UTC +04:00)

The novel coronavirus pandemic is likely to continue for at least three years given the vaccine is available worldwide, director of Thailand’s National Vaccine Institute Dr. Nakorn Premsri said in an interview with TASS, APA reports.

"The coronavirus pandemic will last for at least three years if the vaccine is available worldwide," he said. "Its availability depends on production capacities. It will take about 10 billion doses if we want to put an end to the pandemic. In 2021, the vaccine will only be available six months later."

"AstraZeneca plans to produce 3 billion doses of the vaccine in 2021, Pfizer and Moderna - one billion each," he said. "Next year, about 5-6 billion vaccine doses will be available for the whole world," Premsri noted. "Now, it’s all about vaccine distribution, since many countries have already booked it for themselves, and about production capacities as it is impossible to manufacture the necessary 10 billion doses of the vaccine in in a span of one year."

"We still don’t know whether revaccination will be needed," he stressed. "No one has such data yet. It is necessary to observe the vaccinated people for a long time - six months, a year, to see if a re-vaccination is needed, since this is a new infection for us."

The first coronavirus case in Thailand was confirmed on January 13. By today, around 4,100 such cases have been confirmed in the country. More than 3,800 patients have recovered and 60 patients have died. An emergency regime will stay in place until January 15, 2021.