Gaybutton wrote: ↑Thu Jun 10, 2021 5:07 pm
That is part of the confusion. We get news about the delays in vaccine availability, but no clue about the reason for the delays or when to expect enough of the vaccine for everyone.
It's not just Thailand behaving like that.
The UK and other governments have been deliberately vague about how many vaccines are due and where they are coming from, even when we've had a comparatively good supply.
The reasons for this probably include the scramble and competition between countries to get their hands on vaccines.
I'll give examples:
1 In Europe, the UK developed one of the vaccines, partly funded by the UK government.
We then trialled several vaccines in the UK -last time I looked, it seemed to be more trials than the entire EU.
The UK government signed supply contracts early, which allows companies to set up facilities and start manufacturing.
Then in 2021, the EU commission starts complaining this is "unfair" & threatening export bans, even though the vaccines we were using in the UK wouldn't even exist if we hadn't signed contracts to start production & the EU was late in doing the same. Thankfully some of the EU countries showed a better attitude than the EU commission.
2 The Serum Institute in India licensed the Astra Zeneca vaccine, then suddenly found exports were banned when India had a domestic covid problem. Any overseas government promising vaccines to it's population then has a problem.
Also, apparently Vaccine batches fail occasionally.
Of course, Thailand is supposed to be manufacturing a good proportion of it's vaccine supply locally.
Considering who owns the vaccine maker (we cannot discuss that), perhaps they don't want to make public promises, in case there are delivery delays ?