Workers at the Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone in HCMC’s District 7 are vaccinated against Covid-19. Eight million Covid-19 vaccine doses are expected to arrive in Vietnam next month – PHOTO: NLDO
HCMC – Vietnam will take delivery of around eight million Covid-19 vaccine doses next month and 20-21 million doses in August and September, mainly from AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech, said Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan.
Over the past few months, the Ministry of Health has worked with many countries and vaccine producers to seek Covid-19 vaccine sources, Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper reported.
To date, the volume of Covid-19 vaccines that Vietnam has negotiated successfully is 125 million doses, including 38.9 million doses from the Covax Facility, 30 million doses from AstraZeneca and 31 million doses from Pfizer.
In addition, some other countries and organizations, such as Japan, China and UNICEF, have pledged to provide Vietnam with five to 10 million doses. More recently, India has agreed to sell 15 million Covid-19 doses to Vietnam in 2021, with six million doses expected to arrive in Vietnam next quarter and the remainder in the last quarter of the year.
Vietnam is negotiating to buy 40 million Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine doses from Russia, with half expected to be shipped to Vietnam this year.
Further, a batch of five million Moderna vaccine doses have been bought through Zuellig Pharma.
As the vaccines will be handed over to Vietnam at the end of the year, Vietnam is setting up the largest-ever vaccination campaign. Residents are expected to receive more than one million doses per day.
The Government has set a target to administer 150 million doses to 70% of the population to reach herd immunity, Thuan said.
However, the vaccine shipments to Vietnam may be subject to availability because supplies will be still short until September. Therefore, Vietnam will continue prioritizing the vaccines for groups stated in the Government’s Resolution 21 and workers at industrial parks.
Assessing the large-scale Covid-19 vaccination, Dr Dang Duc Anh, head of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology and head of the National Expanded Program on Immunization, said Vietnam would use all vaccination venues. If those in communes and wards are taken into account, there will be 11,000 sites.
Each day, if 100 people are vaccinated in each site, the target of vaccinating one million people is seen achievable, Anh added.
