HCMC – U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense, offered 34 ultra-low temperature freezers to Vietnam in HCMC today, March 4, to assist the country with storing Covid-19 vaccines.
These freezers are the second batch of 111 ultra-low temperature storage units that the U.S. Department of Defense is offering to Vietnam’s Health Ministry, with a total value of some US$1 million.
These 34 freezers will be given to HCMC and 20 southern provinces to aid their vaccination campaigns.
Speaking at the donation handover ceremony, the U.S. Ambassador said that along with the U.S. CDC and USAID, the U.S. Department of Defense had joined hands with its Vietnamese partners in the fight against Covid.
The donation of the freezers, as well as over 26 million Covid vaccine doses, 100 ventilators and medical equipment have demonstrated the mutual support during the pandemic and marked another important step in the medical cooperation between the two countries.
With these freezers, Vietnam can preserve and deliver mRNA vaccines safely.
The U.S. diplomatic mission in Vietnam will continue working to allocate additional vaccine doses to Vietnam, he added.
Nguyen Vu Trung, head of the HCMC Pasteur Institute, represented the departments receiving the storage units to express his gratitude for the timely support of the U.S.
Earlier, the U.S. had delivered the first batch of 77 ultra-low temperature freezers to the Health Ministry of Vietnam in October last year.
