Myanmar launches COVID-19 vaccination drive following shipment from India

Myanmar on January 26 launched a COVID-19 vaccination drive after the country received 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vials in the first shipment under India’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’. The Southeast Asian country now plans to inoculate 750,000 people in the first quarter of 2021. The country prioritized health workers to get the jab first, followed by the high-risk vulnerable population, according to broadcaster Myanmar Times.

The government plans to inoculate 40 per cent of its population by the end of 2021, the newspaper quoted Dr. Khin Khin Gyi, Myanmar’s director of the Contagious Disease Prevention and Eradication Division as saying. Under the agreement with India, Myanmar purchased the vaccines manufactured by the World’s largest Serum Institute of India for $5 each vial. The shipment touched down in Yangon on January 22. 

Last week, Myanmar’s leader, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, announced at the press conference that the Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca co-manufactured vaccine produced under the license by India will be administered across the hospitals in different cities, starting from those with a significant surge of infections. At a hospital in the capital Naypyitaw, where the vaccination drive started, Suu Kyi participated and observed the campaign as she warned healthcare workers about the vials saying that the government lacked the supplies it needed and the authorities had to be careful. The 75-year-old leader meanwhile is expected to get inoculated Thursday, according to the CNA report. 

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[Indian Embassy in Myanmar in front of vaccine shipment. Credit: AP]

[Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi inspects and watches the vaccination processes to health workers at a hospital. Credit: AP]

Healthcare workers inspect side-effects

Myanmar’s government started vaccinating about 100 personnel on Wednesday at the Ayeyarwaddy COVID-19 Treatment Center in Yangon, which was converted into a makeshift hospital in September with 1,000 beds. While the healthcare workers have been instructed to monitor the symptoms and post-inoculation effects on health, a health worker at the center Myo Thet Naing told AP that thus far, there were no complaints about the side effects of the vaccines.“So far I feel nothing. It is all good,” Naing said. “I feel very pleased and happy,” AP quoted another 19-year-old volunteer Htet Aung Lin who received the vaccine at the center as saying. 

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(Image Credit: AP)