"vaccines"

The smallpox vaccine that most people received as children have enough immunity against monkeypox for at least 88 years, an immunologist said.

Getting vaccinated could help reduce the severity of symptoms of monkeypox patients, a senior virologist said.

A booster shot provides the same level of immunity against Covid-19 to people whose first two shots have been either inactivated or mRNA vaccines, a top virologist said.

Thailand’s first batch of monkeypox vaccine will arrive in the second half of this month, the Disease Control Department (DCD) said on Tuesday. The batch of 1,000 doses will be used to protect people seen as vulnerable to the virus, said DCD chief Opas Karnkawinpong.

The smallpox vaccines in storage with the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) are still valid and can be used if there is a monkeypox outbreak, the Public Health Ministry said.

The fourth Covid-19 jabs of AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines offer similar protection against Omicron, a study by the Department of Disease Control on Chiang Mai residents showed.

The first batch of the long-acting antibody drug Evusheld will arrive in Thailand next Monday and will be immediately administered to kidney failure and organ transplant patients, the Public Health Ministry said.

People should receive two Covid-19 vaccine shots per year in the current situation, Chulabhorn Royal Academy said.

Three Covid-19 jabs may be enough to prevent severe symptoms from the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, a virologist said.

Everyone should go in for an mRNA booster jab as Covid-19 will mutate over time, Vichaiyut Hospital respiratory specialist Dr Manoon Leechawengwongs warned on Thursday.

Many countries have been administering smallpox vaccines to contain the spread of monkeypox, Dr Thiravat Hemachudha, chief of Chulalongkorn University's Information Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, said on Monday.

Lacking vaccines and treatment, North Korea is deploying unconventional methods to fight its growing Covid-19 crisis. In a mere week since “first” cases were acknowledged on May 12, the number of suspected cases there climbed to nearly 2 million.