Thailand to Use Intradermal Vaccination Routes for the COVID-19 Vaccine
Thailand to Use Intradermal Vaccination Routes for the COVID-19 Vaccine
Just yesterday, Reuters published a short article as a follow-up to a piece from last month in which it was revealed that Thailand was considering using intradermal injections to administer the COVID vaccine to its population. The head of Thailand’s medical science department, Supakit Sirilak, indicated that based on previous experience, intradermal injections use 25% (now updated to 20% as of yesterday’s article) of the vaccine amount as opposed to muscular injections. With a national vaccination rate of around only 21% and with a low and strained supply of the vaccine available, the country is desperately trying to vaccinate as much of its population as possible given the ravaging nature of the “virulent Alpha and Delta COVID-19 variants” (Reuters). This new method will start to be rolled out at the discretion of medical providers starting this Friday because their trials have shown that a similar immune response is triggered by this injection method as is triggered by the typical muscular injections.
Intradermal injections are typically used in skin sensitivity tests, such as for allergens and tuberculosis, in which a quick reaction can be measured. However, research from 2015 concerning insulin intradermal injections (ID) for diabetic patients suggests that ID injections may be a suitable option for injection because proper reactions to insulin occurred more quickly than they did in patients receiving intramuscular injections (Rini). The vaccines BCG (for TB), rabies, and smallpox have been approved for intradermal injection as given by the World Health Organization in 2009.
While this is a viable and likely more sustainable option for Thailand to deliver vaccines quickly to its population, it also speaks to the current global crisis in which most nations do not have the supplies to vaccinate their populations effectively. Some sources claim that more than 15 million doses of the vaccine have been wasted in the United States alone since March (NBC News) though not all of these doses are wasted because people are refusing to receive the vaccine, and there is a sheer excess of vaccines as a result. The global south largely has low vaccination rates, and COVID will unfortunately continue to rip through communities around the world until a greater global immunity is developed against COVID. Hopefully, Thailand’s new vaccination plan will provide some COVID relief that the nation badly needs and offer an alternative method for vaccination that more of the world’s nations may consider.
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Comments
Gillian,
Wow, this is so fascinating! In this simple, short, yet very straightforward topic, I see the seeds of a fascinating study in medical anthropology (or HSHM). We see how a context specific need from one place in the world (in this case Thailand, with low income and low vaccine supply) leads to a kind of innovation that could have ramifications well beyond the local case. Across the world there are vaccine supply limitations and one could imagine this Thai innovation becoming useful in so many places, almost quadrupling the available supply… It would be interesting to think of other “COVID innovations” emerging from places in SE Asia.
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