AZ and Siam Bioscience

The Nation reproduces an open letter from the Managing Director of AstraZeneca Thailand James Teague. Like all of the media reports and official statements, it is vague and short on important information.

After months and months, AstraZeneca’s confirms that Siam Bioscience has finally been able to “increase … local production by 20%.” Teague seems to confirm the problems at the monarch’s Siam Bioscience: “In July I wrote an open letter to update you on how we were leaving no stone unturned to accelerate the supply of our Covid-19 vaccine, including efforts to optimise the production process.”

He says Siam Bioscience has (or will) increase “each manufactured batch size by 20%, from 580,000 doses per batch to on average 700,000.” Is each batch monthly? We can’t tell.

He states that AZ has, by October, supplied 35.1 million doses, sufficient for about 17.5 persons.

He also notes (without saying it) that Siam Bioscience’s production has not been able to meet this supply: “In addition to increased local manufacturing capacity, we will import doses from other supply chains.”

It seems that Siam Bioscince can’t meet Thailand’s needs or those of the region: “We will soon have several of our global supply chains providing doses to Southeast Asia over the remainder of this year, ensuring accelerated supply for each country, including Thailand.”

He does say: “Siam Bioscience is forecast to continue exceeding original manufacturing estimates….”. But exactly what’s actually happening remains opaque.