Use Covid-19 vaccines by May 5 or lose them, localities told
THE health minister has warned localities to use their Covax-supplied Covid-19 vaccine doses by May 5 or face having them redistributed.
Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said this during a meeting on Friday with all provinces and cities in the country regarding Covid-19 control and vaccination efforts, urging them to finish vaccinating priority groups before the deadline or the remaining unused doses would go somewhere else.
On April 1, Vietnam received the first batch of 811,200 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from the global vaccine sharing scheme Covax Facility out of the planned 4.1 million-dose shipment by May.
Previously, the health ministry asked all localities to submit a list of all those eligible for vaccination and finish the inoculations by May 15, but the new deadline was moved up 10 days. The Covax doses’ expiry date is said to be May 31.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in his first Cabinet meeting on Thursday said the health ministry and localities could not let any vaccine doses go to waste.
Regarding Vietnam’s slow vaccine rollout, health experts noted the country had its own protocol – different from most nations – to ensure safety for people who get vaccinated as the Covid-19 vaccines had been approved for emergency use only. All vaccination sites have to meet certain requirements in terms of facilities and staff, as well as carry out screenings and counselling before injection. All those who receive the jabs must remain at the site for at least 30 minutes for medical observation, monitor their condition at home in the following 24 hours and further monitoring is required for another three weeks.
Some 73,000 people – mostly frontline workers – have been inoculated against Covid-19, using, for the most part, the 110,000 doses bought from AstraZeneca that arrived in late February more than a month after the national drive was launched on March 8. —