31 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine committed for Vietnam this year

Partners and producers have pledged to supply 110 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines to Vietnam in 2021, the Ministry of Health said in a post on its verified Facebook account on Friday.

The health ministry said it had negotiated with many countries, organizations, and producers to find coronavirus jabs for Vietnam.

Thirty-one million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been committed for Vietnam, the ministry announced in the post.

The COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme has promised to provide the Southeast Asian nation with 38.9 million vaccine shots while AstraZeneca will deliver 30 million doses.

The COVAX scheme will give away the 38.9 million jabs, as Tuoi Tre News understands.

The health ministry added it had also registered to buy an additional 10 million shots from COVAX.

Vietnam will receive 1,682,400 million AstraZeneca shots via the COVAX scheme on Sunday, the health ministry said on Thursday, citing UNICEF.

The country received the first-ever shipment of 117,600 AstraZeneca shots it had bought on February 24.

The Southeast Asian nation then accepted 811,200 COVID-19 vaccine doses from the COVAX scheme on April 1.

The COVAX scheme is a facility co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO), and UNICEF, to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines as well as ensure fair and equitable access for every country.

Vietnam is currently in negotiation with producers of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson from the U.S., CureVac from Germany, Spunik V from Russia, and Sinopharm from China, the ministry revealed.

Vietnam, whose population is around 97 million people, has administered 959,182 coronavirus vaccine shots since it rolled out mass vaccination on March 8.

Those inoculated were medical staff and other frontline workers.

A nurse from Da Nang has been put on a ventilator since she suffered a severe allergic reaction post-coronavirus vaccination on Monday, according to the Ministry of Health.

On May 7, another medical worker in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang died of anaphylaxis after she was inoculated with AstraZeneca vaccine.

Those are very rare cases in COVID-19 vaccination in the country, the ministry said.

Vietnam should be proactive in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic as an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, Prof. Dr. Phan Trong Lan, director of the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City was quoted as saying in the health ministry’s Facebook post.

“Vaccination is thus extremely necessary to increase immunity in the community, stalling the virus and keeping Vietnam from nationwide lockdown as in other countries,” Lan elaborated.

Vietnam has recorded 3,756 local and imported coronavirus infections so far, including 2,657 recoveries and 25 deaths, according to the health ministry’s data.

The nation has confirmed 729 domestic cases since April 27, when it logged the first locally-infected patient after having gone about a month without detecting any community transmission.

By Viet Toan – Tuoi Tre News – May 14, 2021