Gov't chief launches Spring vaccination campaign

The campaign will be implemented from February 1 to 28, which means COVID-19 vaccine administration will continue during the nine-day Lunar New Year festival that start from December 31.

The Government chief urged the medical sector to take advantage of the upcoming Tet holiday to speed up vaccination rate in accordance with instructions of the Ministry of Health. 

He took the occasion to ask localities to learn experience of Ho Chi Minh City to boost vaccination coverage to boost socio-economic development. 

Pham ordered that localities need to rashly accomplish administration of second jabs for over 18-year-old people, especially the elderly and people with chronic diseases.

The second dose vaccination for 12-18 year-old people must be finalized in January and booster shots for the adult population will be finished by the end of the first quarter.

The PM tasked the Ministry of Health to prepare a plan for kid vaccination in accordance with recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Viet Nam's practical reality. 

Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long forecast that Viet Nam would be unable to completely put the COVID-19 pandemic under control in 2022 due to the emergence of new COVID-19 variants.    

He warned of possible spike of infection cases among the group of fully vaccinated people if they fail to comply with the preventive measures.

The Omicron variant has been estimated to be seven times more infectious among the group of unvaccinated people and three times more infectious among fully vaccinated ones, resulting in a soar in the number of cases and a serious pressure on the health system. Hence, it is necessary to focus on disease prevention, the Minister underlined. 

As of late 2021, Viet Nam received 192 million out of 227.4 million vaccine doses via contracts or donations. So far, among the adult population, vaccination coverage is nearly 100% for the first jab, 93.4% for the second jab, and 13.1% for the third jab. 

By January 18, the country had administered 171,638,597 doses of vaccines, with 72,947,487 people now fully vaccinated./.