AstraZeneca has signed a new agreement with the government of Thailand to deliver an additional 60 million doses of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca in 2022, supporting the Ministry of Public Health’s mass vaccination programme.
As part of the new 2022 agreement, AstraZeneca commits to complete next year’s supply of the 60 million doses by the end of the third quarter next year. An existing contract between AstraZeneca and the government for the delivery of 61 million doses by the end of 2021 remains in place. To date, 24.6 million doses have been delivered in 2021, including eight million in September.
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The new agreement allows for the government to switch to vaccine candidate AZD2816, if approved by the Thailand regulator. AZD2816 is a vaccine candidate currently undergoing Phase II/III trials, with the aim of being able to broaden individuals’ immune response against variants of concern. The delivery timeline of the vaccine candidate would be confirmed at a later date.
James Teague, Country President, AstraZeneca (Thailand) said: “The new 2022 supply agreement is a major milestone in our support of the Thailand government, to help protect the nation against COVID-19 and bring the rising Delta cases under control. We remain committed to Thailand and thank the government for their ongoing partnership.”
To date, more than 1.3 billion doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine have been released for supply to more than 170 countries globally, and more than two-thirds of these doses have been delivered to low- and lower-middle income countries.
Since the first international launches in early 2021, the vaccine has helped prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalisations and helped save tens of thousands of lives.1
COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca
The COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, (ChAdOx1-S [Recombinant]), formerly AZD1222, was co-invented by the University of Oxford and its spin-out company, Vaccitech. It uses a replication-deficient chimpanzee viral vector based on a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) that causes infections in chimpanzees and contains the genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spike protein. After vaccination, the surface spike protein is produced, priming the immune system to attack the SARS-CoV-2 virus if it later infects the body.
AZD2816
AZD2816 has been built using the same adenoviral vector platform as with Vaxzevria, with minor genetic alterations to the spike protein based on the Beta (B.1.351, South African) variant. The Beta variant vaccine contains ten changes across the spike protein, many of which are also seen in other variants of concern, and which lead to effects such as, reduced ability of antibodies induced against the original virus to block cell entry (K417N, E484K, N501Y); increased infectivity compared to the original virus (D614G); reduced sensitivity of neutralising antibodies to the original virus (L452R). These modifications are only minor and in all other ways the two vaccines are the same.
