HCMC – Three million doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine donated by the United States through the World Health Organization’s COVAX program will arrive in Vietnam this week.
This, along with the two million Moderna Covid-19 vaccine doses that arrived in Vietnam on July 10, takes the total number of vaccine doses donated by the United States to the country to five million.
Apart from the shipment set to be dispatched this week, Vietnam will take delivery of 100,000 doses from Romania, Professor Dr Dang Duc Anh, head of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, said on July 19.
In addition, the country is proposing China send five million doses of the Vero Cell Covid-19 vaccine produced by Sinopharm, the local media reported.
The Ministry of Health last night, July 19, said that Pfizer had agreed to increase the number of Covid-19 vaccine doses set to be shipped to Vietnam in the third quarter of 2021 from three million to 3.5 million. Besides, the U.S. drugmaker also approved to sell 20 million more doses to Vietnam this year, taking the total number of Pfizer vaccine doses set to arrive in the country to 51 million.
With the 105 million doses of vaccines that have been signed and pledged to be transported to Vietnam and the other 70 million doses under negotiation, the country will have a total of 175 million doses of vaccines this year or in early 2022.
Up to now, Vietnam has received over 10.6 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, including 7.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, two million doses of the Moderna vaccine and over 194,000 Pfizer vaccine doses.
In Vietnam, over 4.2 million doses have been administered, while some 306,500 people have been fully vaccinated with two shots.
Professor Anh also said that in the third quarter of the year, Vietnam will access over 26 million doses, while another 65.5 million doses will arrive in the country in the fourth quarter.
Besides, Vietnam has reached vaccine technology transfer agreements and support for vaccine production from the United States and Russia.