HCMC – The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology has issued a decision to distribute eight million doses of the Vero Cell Covid-19 vaccine to 25 cities and provinces.
According to the Ministry of Health, Hanoi will receive the largest amount with nearly 1.36 million doses, followed by Quang Ninh with 700,000 doses.
HCMC, Lang Son, Haiphong and Yen Bai will get 500,000 doses each, while other cities and provinces will receive 100,000-400,000 doses each.
These vaccine doses are sponsored by the Van Thinh Phat Group, which earlier donated five million doses of the same vaccine produced by China’s Sinopharm.
Up to now, Vietnam has secured some 45 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccines. The country has received some 20 million doses of the Vero Cell Covid-19 vaccine, including six million doses donated by China.
As of September 19, Vietnam had administered over 34 million Covid-19 vaccine doses countrywide. However, the country still has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the region as only over six million people have received both doses.
From September 8 to 16, the Ministry of Health allocated a total of 3.7 million Covid-19 doses to Hanoi. To date, the capital city has administered over 6.4 million doses.
The Ministry of Health approved China’s Vero Cell Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in early June.
The vaccine is produced by the China National Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd., (Sinopharm) for intramuscular injection, with each 0.5-ml dose containing 6.5U of the inactivated Covid-19 antigen.
Vero Cell was the third Covid vaccine to receive emergency use authorization in Vietnam, after Britain’s AstraZeneca vaccine and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
Vietnam has now approved seven Covid vaccines for emergency use — AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen, Sinopharm’s Vero Cell, Sputnik V, and Hayat-Vax.
Five of them, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, Vero Cell and Sputnik V, are being administered in Vietnam.
