HCMC – Vietnam’s Covid caseload continued to surge, with more than 142,000 new cases confirmed by the Ministry of Health today, March 6.
Hanoi is still the country’s biggest Covid hotspot currently, with 29,578 fresh infections recorded. The capital city’s Hoang Mai, Dong Anh, Soc Son, Hoai Duc and Nam Tu Liem districts reported the sharpest increase in new infections.
Bac Ninh, Nghe An and Haiphong detected over 5,000 new Covid cases each. Besides, Bac Giang and Hoa Binh provinces added approximately 26,350 and 33,700 infections detected earlier to the national Covid case count management system, respectively.
Vietnam’s Covid tally has exceeded 4.43 million since the beginning of the outbreak.
This afternoon, the Ministry of Health confirmed 87 more Covid deaths, taking the nation’s death toll to 40,813. Hanoi, Daklak, Danang, Nghe An and Thai Nguyen reported the most fatalities today.
To date, more than 2.68 million Covid patients in the country have fully recovered, while there are currently some 4,200 critically ill patients.
The country has administered more than 197.5 million doses of Covid vaccine nationwide so far, including some 180.5 million doses for people aged 18 or older and over 17 million doses for children aged between 12 and 17.
Meanwhile, the vaccination campaign for children aged five to 11 will begin next month. Sixth graders will be the first to be vaccinated, followed by children in lower grades.
Vietnam expects to receive a shipment of three million Covid vaccine doses for children aged five to 11 by the end of this month. The second shipment is expected to arrive in April.
The country is completing necessary procedures to purchase nearly 22 million doses of Covid vaccine for this age group.
The Ministry of Health on March 1 approved the Comirnaty (Pfizer BioNTech) Covid vaccine for use for children aged 5-11, with a dosage lower than that used in people aged 12 and above.
One dose for children of this age group is 0.2ml of the vaccine containing10mcg of mRNA, which is one-third of the amount of mRNA for children aged 12 and older.
