Romania donates 300,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Viet Nam

Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs To Anh Dung expressed gratitude to the Government and people of Romania for the gift given to Viet Nam. 

Romania is the first EU member state to donate vaccine to Viet Nam. Viet Nam is also the first Asian nation to get vaccine gift from the EU country.

To also thanked Romanian Ambassador to Viet Nam Cristina Romila for her support for the vaccine donation and suggested the Romanian side consider reselling vaccines for Viet Nam.

Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan affirmed that the Ministry of Health would early administer the vaccine in the most practical and effective manner. 

Earlier, Romania decided to gift 300,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Viet Nam, up three times from its initial plan following phone talks between Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on July 14.  

To date, Viet Nam has received about 23 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX Facility, other nations’ assistance, and under signed contracts, according to Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son who is head of the Government's working group on vaccine diplomacy.

In the past week, Viet Nam has reported record-high infection rates, with new cases averaging over 10,000 per day and COVID-related deaths surging to 300 per day.

Viet Nam remains vulnerable to such a deadly outbreak is that much of its population remains unvaccinated. As of Tuesday, Viet Nam had fully vaccinated just 1.9% of its population, while 15.8% of the country’s 98 million citizens have gotten the first shots.

By Kim Anh