Myanmar Military Regime Soldiers Said To Be Injected With Unapproved COVID-19 Vaccine

Myanmar military regime leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing (standing car in front) during the ceremony. (Wikimedia Commons/Mil.ru)

JAKARTA - Shocking news came from the Myanmar military, when an internal source said they had been vaccinated against COVID-19 with a vaccine that had not yet been approved.

The military's secret vaccination program, which uses the Covaxin vaccine from Indian pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech, started in January and continued for three months.

Those who received the vaccine were not told that the vaccine was still in the third clinical trial phase, according to several people who have taken part in the program.

"They said they would vaccinate us and then check our immunity two weeks after vaccination, to see if it had gone up. So you could say it's a test," one of the officers who was one of the first batch of test subjects told Myanmar Now as quoted on Sunday, August 22.

Officers stationed at a military hospital in Yangon's Mingaladon Township said 15 soldiers, including himself, had their blood drawn three times after each of the two doses of the vaccine they received.

Myanmar army illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Mil.ru)

He said the program was later expanded to include more military personnel after the results of the first 15 vaccinated people had been checked.

"I thought they were taking blood from everyone. But then we found out it was just us. Even we joked, we were used as lab rats. It sucks, but there's nothing you can do, because it's the army."

Another person who is required to take part in the program as a test subject said that this COVID-19 vaccination was carried out by order of a senior officer.

"They want the study population to serve as a record of the people who were given the injections, maybe 100,000 people or more," said a doctor from another military hospital in Yangon.

"To be honest, I think it's sad, because we're being used as human guinea pigs in this way," he continued.

The doctor, who asked not to be named, said there were two teams involved in collecting data on those who had received the vaccine.

"There's a group of people who track how our bodies react to vaccines, how many people have a fever, how many get nauseous. Others are testing how much the amount of antibodies in our blood increases after vaccination," he explained.

Myanmar military illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Mil.ru)

Separately, the wife of a naval officer revealed that her husband was given the first shot in mid-February and the second a month later, eventually learning the vaccine he received was Covaxin, and not the approved Covishield vaccine.

She added that although her husband was able to obtain this information because of his rank, there was no way that ordinary soldiers included in the military vaccination program would know this fact.

To note, Bharat Biotech started phase 3 trials for Covaxin last November, but in early January, there was still not much progress due to a lack of volunteers willing to try the vaccine.

The company, which has denied conducting clinical trials outside India, told Myanmar Now by email it shipped 55 vials of the vaccine to Myanmar in January, but added this is standard practice when dealing with potential buyers.

However, on February 11, another 200,000 doses of Covaxin were delivered to Myanmar as part of the Indian government's Vaccine Maitri diplomacy program, of which 1.5 million doses of Covishield had been delivered on January 22.

On January 27, India's online Mint news outlet reported that Bharat Biotech is seeking approval from the Governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh to test Covaxin in both countries.

Myanmar military illustration. (Twitter/@MyatWutYeeAung1)

Meanwhile, an official from the Medical Research Council of India (ICMR), Bharat Biotech's partner in producing the vaccine, was quoted in the article as saying such trials are a normal part of the procedure followed by countries wishing to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The article also notes, however, that Bharat Biotech refuses to provide any comment on the subject of foreign experiments.

Unlike Covishield, which is produced by the Serum Institute of India under license from multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company AstraZeneca, Covaxin is developed in India. By the end of June, it had received emergency use approvals in 16 countries, according to local media reports.

The World Health Organization (WHO), which received a request to add Covaxin to its Emergency Use List in early July, has not yet completed its review of the submitted data.

While the Myanmar military regime does not admit to conducting clinical trials on military personnel, senior regime figures have made no secret of their willingness to use vaccines that have not been approved by the WHO to combat COVID-19.

In February, the coup leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, named Covaxin as one of the vaccines the regime will buy, along with other vaccines from China and Russia.

Myanmar Coup. The VOI editorial team continues to monitor the political situation in one of the ASEAN member countries. Casualties from civilians continue to fall. Readers can follow the news covering the Myanmar military coup by clicking this link.