HCMC – In a Covid-19 pandemic exit plan, Vietnam is preparing to launch what is described as its biggest vaccination campaign, Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long announced at a meeting on June 15.
The steering committee for the nationwide inoculation campaign is headed by the health minister while the headquarters of the campaign is located at the Ministry of National Defense and led by a deputy chief of staff of the Vietnam People’s Army.
Minister Long said the campaign will involve many different ministries and agencies as it is the largest in the nation’s history.
Eight cold storage facilities for Covid vaccines will be established, with one of them in the Hanoi Capital High Command and the rest at seven military units nationwide. Vaccines which are shipped to local airports will be quickly transported to the storage facilities to maintain their quality, Long said.
All the facilities must meet Good Storage Practices standards, he added.
The leader of the ministry said that during the campaign, all vaccination sites will be strictly supervised by an online control system, with information on the number of people receiving jabs and doses administered to be publicized.
Some 15,000 vaccination stations with sufficient human resources and equipment will update and publicize the vaccination process, the number of doses administered and the number of people vaccinated, Long said.
The national steering committee for vaccination must work online round-the-clock to monitor the vaccination process closely.
All processes from vaccine transportation and preservation to Covid-19 vaccination organizations must be certified as safe, Long said.
Vietnam will receive more than one million Covid-19 vaccine doses from the Covax Facility at the end of this month or early next month. The Ministry of Health is expecting to have 150 million doses until the end of this year to vaccinate 75% of the population.
The vaccination campaign will need around VND25.2 trillion, or US$1.1 billion. The Government has already arranged a budget of VND14 trillion, so a Covid-19 vaccine fund has been set up to raise funds from individuals and organizations to cover the remaining VND11.2 trillion.
By 5:00 p.m. on June 15, the fund had received donations totaling nearly VND5.13 trillion from 306,791 individuals and organizations, according to data from the Vietnam News Agency.
