Ho Chi Minh City, Jan 4 (EFE).- Vietnam said on Monday that it agreed to buy 30 million doses of the anti-Covid vaccine developed by the British-Swedish lab AstraZeneca.

The Southeast Asian country is also in talks to purchase several other vaccines including the one developed by American pharma company Pfizer.

Meanwhile, Thailand has announced that it is set to receive the first batch of the vaccine developed by China's Sinovac in February.

Vietnam's deputy health minister, Trong Quoc Cuong, told reporters that the government had finalized an agreement to buy the vaccine jointly developed by AstraZeneca and the Oxford University for 15 million people (two doses each)

It should be available to the people during the first quarter of the year itself, the minister said.

He also said Hanoi was in talks to buy other vaccines including the one launched by Pfizer, Russia's Sputnik V, and others from China, without specifying the companies.

Regarding Sputnik V, the minister said Vietnam was negotiating an agreement to enable a state company to manufacture it locally using Russian technology and knowledge.

In August, the government had announced an agreement to secure 50-150 million doses of the Russian vaccine, but no further details over the timeline of its distribution have been released.

Cuong said Vietnam fulfills the requirements to join the World Health Organization's COVAX program, which aims to ensure vaccine access to developing countries and would allow Hanoi to receive doses for 16 percent of the country's nearly 100 million residents.

Vietnam, which has so far registered 1,494 cases of the new coronavirus, including 35 deaths, is also developing two indigenous vaccines, which are expected to be distributed by the end of the year.

The clinical trials for one of these - local pharma company Nanogen's candidate Nanocovax - began in December.

The second one, developed by the Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals, will be tested from this month.

Meanwhile, the Thai health ministry said in a statement on Sunday that it was set to receive the first shipment of anti-coronavirus vaccines produced by Chinese firm Sinovac next month, as part of a plan to procure two million doses between February and April.

The ministry added that it had begun to locally produce the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, and was aiming to begin distribution by May.

Thai authorities have announced plans to vaccinate 50 percent of the around 70-million citizens against Covid-19 by the end of 2021.

Thailand, which had managed to control the pandemic with local transmission dropping to almost zero since May, is now witnessing a second wave of infections since mid-December, with a total of 8,439 cases and 65 deaths registered so far.

On Monday, 745 new Covid-19 cases were detected in the country, most of them among migrant workers arriving from neighboring Myanmar, leading to authorities strengthening containment measures. EFE

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