Getting children aged 5-11 vaccinated against COVID-19 in second quarter

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh demanded highest resolve to complete administration of COVID-19 vaccines to children aged 5-11 in the second quarter to ensure safety for them before the start of the academic school year.

Addressing a meeting on COVID-19 response on Saturday, the Government chief ordered completion of administering the second shots to children aged 12-17 in April this year.

Vaccines remain the strategic weapon and the most important shield to the pandemic, the Prime Minister emphasized.

Pham tasked the Ministry of health to develop and report to the Government a plan to response to possiblly new and more transmissible strains.

As of 6:00 pm on Friday, Viet Nam confirmed 10,135,789 infection cases including 8,455,675 recovered cases and 42,768 fatalities.

Viet Nam ranks 12 out of 225 countries and territories around the world in terms of national caseload, and 110th in terms of the death toll.

Reports at the meeting showed the number of daily COVID-19 cases began to decrease significantly from late March despite the country fully resumed international tourism.

Thanks to high vaccination rate, the number of community infection cases, critically-ill paitients, and deaths over the past three weeks fell by 39.6 percent, 31.7 percent, and 26.1 percent, according to the Ministry of Health.