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Today Vietnam records additional 1,031 cases of Covid-19 |
Since the beginning of the epidemic, the Southeast Asian country has had more than 11.53 million people infected with Covid-19 and over 10.6 million people recovered. Some 14 severe Covid-19 patients are being on oxygen nationwide.
However, Vietnam has not recorded any Covid-19 deaths and the number of deaths due to this disease is 43,186 cases, accounting for 0.4 percent of the total number of infections.
The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) under the Ministry of Health recently sent a dispatch to departments of health and centers for disease control of provinces and cities on strengthening the implementation of immunization. Moreover, if any locality has a demand for supplementation of the AstraZeneca vaccine, they should register.
Accordingly, the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology has recently allocated 832,900 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with an expiry date from July 9 to 11 to 63 provinces/cities for booster vaccination for people aged 18 years and above.
In order to increase the vaccination coverage and effective use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, the NIHE requested the local steering committees for Covid-19 prevention and control to direct relevant units to continue strengthening the implementation of vaccination against Covid-19 for special groups, especially booster doses for people aged 18 years and older in localities that have not reached the target rate of at least 80 percent, effectively using the number of AstraZeneca vaccines already allocation.
According to the NIHE, to date, over 266 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered nationwide. Furthermore, 51.6 million people aged 18 and over have received the booster dose with a rate of 81 percent. However, the vaccination coverage rates in many localities are below 80 percent.
Meanwhile, the current AstraZeneca vaccine at some medical centers excluding 204,400 doses in the national reserve is about 300,000 doses. The speed of using the AstraZeneca vaccine from the beginning of April until now has been slow, averaging about 1,040 doses per day, leading to a high risk of not using all of the vaccine. Vaccine hesitancy poses serious challenges for achieving coverage for population immunity.
