HCMC – Having run out of Covid-19 vaccine doses for children over the past 10 days, the HCMC authority has proposed the Ministry of Health transfer 13,700 doses from Dong Nai to the city, according to the HCMC Center for Disease Control (HCDC).
At a meeting about the Covid-19 pandemic situation on September 29, HCDC sought approval to transfer the doses from Dong Nai to the city.
As of September 26, the booster rate among children 12 to 17 in HCMC was at 34.6%, lower than the country’s average of 57.9%.
The rate of the first shot for children in HCMC was 62.4%, far lower than the national average of 88.6%. The city’s second shot rate was just 34.9%, while the average figure in the country reached 60.9%.
Earlier, the HCMC Department of Health wrote to the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology and HCMC Pasteur Institute seeking an allocation of 23,000 Pfizer doses for children 5 to 11 in September and October.
Due to the supply interruption, some 116,000 children have failed to be injected with the second dose of Covid vaccine in accordance with the recommended schedule.
On September 20, the Ministry of Health accepted the transfer of Covid vaccines between localities and worked with UNICEF to allocate the Moderna vaccines as soon as possible.
The HCMC authority has recently striven to speed up the administration of the Covid vaccine for children. Specifically, the Department of Health has worked with schools and education centers to carry out vaccination campaigns and organized many mobile vaccination points.
