HCMC – Dong Nai Province, the country’s third largest Covid-19 hotspot, has some 1.3 million doses of vaccines left, but is facing a shortage of syringes, making it hard to speed up the southern province’s vaccination campaign.
Speaking at an anti-Covid meeting today, October 6, Director of the Dong Nai Department of Health Phan Huy Anh Vu said that some 250,000 syringes which were allocated by the Ministry of Health were yet to arrive in the province.
If the volume of syringes is not available in the province in the coming days, the local authorities will have to seek syringes supply sources and buy them to speed up vaccination.
With 1.3 million doses left, including 400,000 doses of Sinopharm’s Vero Cell vaccine, 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and some 800,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the province will give the first dose to all residents 18 or older, Dr Vu said.
Dong Nai Chairman Cao Tien Dung asked the health authorities to quickly handle the shortage of syringes to avoid delaying the vaccination process, VnExpress news site reported.
In addition, the province’s police were tasked with considering removing coronavirus checkpoints in areas safe from Covid and ramping up patrolling along the streets.
Dong Nai has reported over 52,000 cases in the ongoing fourth wave of the pandemic, which began in late April. The province has administered over 2.2 million doses of the Covid vaccine.
