Laos received a batch of vaccine produced by the Chinese company Sinopharm, which is starting to inject medical staff and frontline forces.

The Laotian Times newspaper reported that the Lao government had received 300,000 doses of Sinopharm's Covid-19 vaccine and had initiated 600 health workers, adding that the country had previously received 2,000 doses of the vaccine from China and Russia.

China State Radio China Radio International also confirmed the information.

Laos is one of the two countries with the lowest reported cases of Covid-19 in Southeast Asia, besides East Timor, with only 45 cases and no deaths.

Laos applies uniform standards of self-monitoring and isolation to the employees of international organizations, corporate executives and workers in general.

Sinopharm's BBIBP-CorV vaccine uses an inactivated virus, in which the virus is inactivated by chemicals, heat or radiation, making the vaccine more stable and safer than the vaccine containing the live virus.