Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long urges localities to stay alert to the COVID-19 pandemic (Photo: Ministry of Health)

At a meeting with voters in Vinh Long province’s Binh Tan district on Tuesday, Mr. Long said Vietnam has negotiated for vaccines with many countries and international organizations. Vietnam will receive 40 million doses from the COVAX Facility and 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that were already ordered. The Ministry of Health is proposing buying 31 million doses of Pfizer vaccine and vaccines from other sources.

“When a vaccine source is assured, we intend to expand vaccination coverage to more people. We are working on this unprecedented historic vaccination campaign on such a large scale. Therefore, from now to the end of 2021 people will have access to vaccines under the program that the Government and the Ministry of Health are currently implementing,” said Minister Long.

A total of 900,000 people in Vietnam have been given COVID-19 vaccine shots to date, according to Tuesday morning report from the National Expanded Program on Immunization.
The doses administered has reached 97 percent of the existing stock of 917,000 doses of AstraZeneca that Vietnam has received so far as part of the purchase of 30 million doses from the company and another 40 million doses from the global vaccine sharing scheme COVAX Facility that is expected to be delivered in different batches within 2021 and early 2022.