PUBLISHED : 2 Sep 2023 at 05:00
Thailand’s first Covid-19 vaccine is expected to be completed around the end of this month.
The vaccine is produced by the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO). It is known as HXP-GPOVac, which is now in its third round of clinical tests.
The HXP-GPOVac is the most advanced locally made Covid-19 vaccine so far, said the National Vaccine Institute’s (NVI) director, Nakhon Premsri.
About 4,000 volunteers from Nakhon Phanom Hospital participated in the third development stage, with each being administered a 10-microgramme shot as a booster in December last year.
The test results will come out in the middle of this month, Mr Nakhon said.
“If the test result [of Covid antibodies in volunteers] is satisfactory, the GPO will register the vaccine with the Food and Drug Administration by the end of this month,” he said.
After getting approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the GPO will produce the vaccine as a booster shot, with a target of 5-10 million doses a year. Mr Nakhon said people will have a chance to get the GPO’s Covid-19 vaccine around the beginning of next year.
“The GPO’s vaccine can be further developed to be a second-generation vaccine to fight against new strains such as XBB in the future,” he said.
The HXP-GPOVac was developed using the Newcastle disease virus (NDV) as a prototype and was developed by using an egg-based production process, the same method of developing the influenza vaccine, which has been used for the past 60 years.
The first two phases of the study, from 2021 to 2022, showed that GPO’s vaccine can stimulate Covid-19 antibodies while remaining safe to use, he added.