Covid vaccine progress needs investment 4 4 In normal times, a vaccine is a health product that works its way to protect a person from a disease. But in the age of "new normal", vaccines can define a country's development level. Advanced countries such as the US and UK started rolling out vaccination programmes last month as authorised agencies approved Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccine for emergency use, while developing countries have to wait longer as available vaccines of the two pharma giants are mostly reserved. Thailand is likely to get vaccines from AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, around mid-year. But after the Samut Sakhon virus outbreak, the government had to order two million doses from Sinovac, a Beijing-based company, with the first lot being delivered next month.