Vietnam continues to promote vaccination

Vaccines are identified as “weapons” that play an important role both in the short term and the long term in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the Prime Minister has continuously requested the Ministry of Health to drastically and quickly implement the COVID-19 vaccination campaign nationwide, so that about 100% of people aged 18 and over will have received two doses of the vaccine by December 31, 2021.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic appeared in our country, Vietnam has been actively seeking different sources of vaccines, such as calling for support from other countries and international organisations, buying vaccines, and promoting the domestic research and production of vaccines.

Vietnam has so far signed contracts to buy vaccines and receive vaccine aid totalling 211 million doses, of which 156.4 million doses have been delivered to Vietnam, showing the great efforts of the Government and the health sector in equipping “weapons” to fight the pandemic.

Vietnam started the vaccination campaign in the beginning of March 2021, a bit late compared to other countries, but after that, the country made an impressive acceleration. The Government Resolution No. 128/NQ-CP emphasised the significance of accelerating vaccinations to achieve universal vaccine coverage.

More than 133.7 million doses of the vaccine were administered to people as of December 14, with 96.7% of adults receiving one dose of the vaccine and 79.1% of adults received two doses.

In addition, localities have injected 7.35 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 12 to 17 and some localities have started to deploy booster injections for people in high-risk groups, showing that Vietnam's vaccination strategy is quite flexible and suitable with the development of the pandemic.

However, according to the Ministry of Health, the vaccination progress of the whole country tends to decrease in the recent days, while the rate of vaccine uses in the total number of vaccines allocated is still low in many localities, while the vaccination coverage rate for adults is under 85% in several localities.

In the first week of December, the country administered only 4.8 million doses of the vaccine, down 5.7 million doses compared to the previous week.

With the large supply of vaccines at present and domestically produced vaccines anticipated in 2022, Vietnam has no shortage of vaccines, even enough for booster injections. Therefore, localities need to keep a close eye on the situation and speed up the vaccination rate as quickly as possible.

Localities also need to make a list of all elderly and people with underlying medical conditions who have not been vaccinated, to promptly give them injections in order to complete the goal of administering 100% of adults by the end of this year.

On the other hand, it is also urgent to complete booster injections for all people in order of priority by the end of the first quarter of 2022, especially those on the front lines of the fight against the pandemic, people from 50 years old, and people with underlying medical conditions.

While waiting for the license to vaccinate children under 10 years old, provinces and cities should make a list and screen the health of those children so that when the vaccine is approved, children of this age will be immediately injected.

The deadline to complete vaccine coverage in 63 provinces and cities at the request of the Prime Minister is less than 20 days, so it is necessary to have the consensus and joint efforts of all Vietnamese people to protect health and create community immunity. Any locality that fails to fulfil this goal, the chairman of the provincial People's Committee and the Minister of Health will have to take accountability before the Government and the Prime Minister.