CCSA spokesman Dr Taweesilp Visanuyothin said on January 20 that the children will be inoculated with orange-cap formula vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech.

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A health worker prepares a dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Bangkok, Thailand.

The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged 5 to 11, which comes in a multiple-dose vial with orange cap and a label with orange border, has been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration.

Three million doses of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is expected to arrive in the kingdom on January 26 to innoculate children aged 5 to 11. The vaccine is part of a 10-million dose order made previously. After receiving the vaccine, the Thai Ministry of Health will take a few days to evaluate and test some samples as a safety precaution before starting the vaccination.

The vaccination program for five to 11-year-olds will get underway at the Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health for children with underlying conditions such as asthma and obesity before moving to other hospitals. The ministry will work with the Education Ministry to vaccinate all children with underlying health conditions first.

The ministry has recorded an increasing infection rate among students since the start of January. Infections are high among those aged 13-19 and at least one COVID-19 infected student aged under 18 has died since November. So far, 4.5 million out of five million teenagers aged 12-18 have received first shots and just over 4 million have got second jabs.

In a related news, the Thai Ministry of Health said that the country logged 8,640 new COVID-19 cases and 13 fatalities in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of infections since the beginning of the pandemic to more than 2.3 million cases, with 22,000 deaths.

Source: VNA