Vietnam races for vaccination drive
Many health experts, businesses, and people want to promote the campaign quickly and effectively.
According to Dr. Nguyen Quoc Binh, Visiting Professor at Laval University Canada, the vaccination drive should be implemented as soon as possible
Furthermore, an anti-epidemic command team should be set up to control all anti-epidemic activities of Ho Chi Minh City including coordination of human resources, hospitals, necessities, information.
Additionally, there should be a common app so that people can declare their health status as well as registration for vaccination. Through the app, people can know injection venues and appointment schedules.
He added that it is important now to deploy the vaccination as quickly as possible. Nursing students should be authorized to administer the Covid-19 vaccine; therefore, it is necessary to mobilize health students from universities for short-term training on inoculation. At each injection point, a doctor is responsible for monitoring people for 15 - 30 minutes after injection.
At the same time, an advisory board consisting of some good doctors will provide timely advice or immediate treatment if there is an incident.
In addition, people over 65 years old, people with vulnerable background diseases, drivers, traders, delivery people, students participating in the fight against the epidemic should be the top priority in the vaccination drive.
Vu Nam Chien, Deputy Director of Tan Nhat Huong Trading Company, announced that enterprises are willing to pay for a vaccine for workers’ health conditions presently because each business has thousands of workers; therefore, it is inevitable that workers might contract the coronavirus.
After the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee issued regulations against Covid-19 for businesses, the number of workers who are allowed to stay and work on-site at each business had to be halved; nevertheless, businesses are still at the risk of operation suspension.
in Chien’s opinion, to help businesses get out of this situation quickly, the Ministry of Health needs to carefully guide the source of imported vaccines, as well as allocate them to localities; in which there must be special priority policies for Ho Chi Minh City - where 60 percent of enterprises producing essential goods in particular and more than 300,000 manufacturing enterprises, in general, are located.
In each locality, including Ho Chi Minh City, it is necessary to establish intermediary focal points parallel to the district health system to quickly deliver the fastest vaccine to businesses and people, he said. Regarding the vaccine import procedure, the city administrators should let businesses actively connect vaccine importers in addition to increasing vaccine import.
EuroCham Chairman Alain Cany voiced his opinion that employees in factories should be inoculated first.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AmCham) has petitioned that all workers in factories must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Because this is the solution to ensure the health and safety of workers, maintain business continuity, facilitate investment and promote economic recovery. More importantly, it is necessary to maximize the private sector's readiness in terms of the distribution of vaccine resources.
Currently, the only sustainable solution is to promote the mass vaccination program against the Covid-19 vaccine. European companies are willing to pay for a vaccine against the coronavirus for protecting their employees. This will help speed up vaccination, while simultaneously reducing the financial and administrative burden on the state budget. But businesses need to access enough supplies. EuroCham has been using all the tools to assist Vietnam in procuring adequate vaccine doses.
He believed that businesses will recover as soon as mass vaccination is carried out.
Resident Vo Van Quang in Thu Duc District’s Hiep Binh Chanh said that not only elderly people but laborers in his residential quarter expected to be vaccinated early for their safety and relatives’. His children who are working in companies are yearning to be inoculated to keep working and not transmit the disease to others.
He voiced his opinion that the government should let private companies import vaccines for mass vaccination to help more city dwellers access vaccines to drive back the epidemic.
Vu Tuan Cuong, Director of Drug Administration of Vietnam under the Ministry of Health, said the Ministry will simplify import procedures for Covid-19 vaccine
In order to diversify the source of vaccines to serve the needs of people, the Ministry of Health has simplified all import procedures including the licensing and importing of Covid-19 vaccines to create the most favorable conditions for localities, organizations, enterprises, and individuals to purchase vaccines. On its website, the Drug Administration of Vietnam has also posted more than 30 importers that are eligible for importing Covid-19 vaccines.
Along with that, the Ministry of Health announced to support the import procedures for all localities, corporations, businesses, and individuals that can access the Covid-19 vaccine.
However, the Ministry noted importers should buy the World Health Organization-certified vaccines including AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Sinopharm, Johnson & Johnson. The Ministry will approve the vaccine five days after receiving the importers’ legal document.
Importers should attach a certificate of the manufacturer and/or quality certificate of the regulatory agency so that the National Institute for Control of Vaccines and Biologicals (NICVB) will issue a certificate within 48 hours as recommended by WHO to ensure quality and avoid importing vaccines of unknown origin.
