Vietnam nears vaccination fund goal

Vietnam’s current VND22 trillion ($956.2 million) Covid-19 budget is nearly enough to inoculate 75 million of its 96-million population.

Since the National Assembly’s Standing Committee agreed to allocate VND14 trillion of the national state fund to the vaccination program, along with VND8 trillion the Covid-19 vaccine fund has raised so far, Vietnam currently has VND22 trillion to purchase vaccines, Finance Minister Ho Duc Phoc told the legislative NA on Thursday.

In May, Vietnam set up a Covid-19 vaccine fund to raise contributions from various sources, including private companies and citizens, to ease the burden on its resources.

The fund has received VND7.52 trillion and pledges worth around VND579 billion.

Vietnam aims to procure 150 million doses of vaccines to cover 70 percent of its population this year, the Health Ministry announced earlier, at an estimated cost of VND25.2 trillion.

The central government is expected to provide VND16 trillion of this amount, with cities, provinces and private sources making up the rest.

Vietnam has successfully negotiated and will receive more than 120 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines within this year, either via commercial contracts or the Covax mechanism.

Of these, 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been acquired by Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC) and by the end of May, 405,200 doses had been delivered to the country.

In addition, Vietnam has also secured 38.9 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine via the Covax.

In July, the first batch of 31 million doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is expected to arrive in Vietnam following an agreement between Vietnam’s Health Ministry and the producer.

Last week, Vietnam received almost one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine donated by Japan, and 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from China.

By Anh Minh – VnExpress.net – June 25, 2021