Efforts required to effectively use allocated AstraZeneca vaccine doses

A woman gets vaccinated against COVID-19 (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) - The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) under the Ministry of Health recently sent a dispatch to the Departments of Health, Centres for Disease Control of provinces and cities on strengthening the implementation of vaccination and supplementation of AstraZeneca vaccine against the COVID-19 pandemic from April to June.

The institute, which stores COVID-19 vaccines before distribution to localities, asked provinces and cities’ health authorities to review the list of people that should get vaccines to have an estimate of the amount of doses needed.

In February, NIHE allocated 832,900 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with an expiration date of July 9 and July 11 to the 63 provinces and cities nationwide as booster shots for people aged from 18.

Over 266 million doses have been administered nationwide, of which about 51.6 million people aged 18 and older have received the third dose, equivalent to 81%. However, this rate is not uniform across the country and there are still many localities with booster coverage below 80%.

Currently, the number of AstraZeneca vaccines remaining at local level storage facilities (not including 204,400 doses in the national reserve) is about 300,000. The rate of vaccinations in the first eight days of April 2023 is slow, averaging about 1,040 doses per day, which means a lot might go unused.

According to statistics from the Health Ministry, from April 10-16, Vietnam reported 3,325 new COVID-19 cases – the highest in a week since the beginning of this year. In the past more than 3 months, the country has recorded no fatality.

Phan Trong Lan, Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine, said that in the coming time, the number of new cases may be on the rise.

He stressed the need to protect vulnerable groups such as the elderly, people with underlying diseases, and pregnant women./.

VNA