1.2 million more doses of AstraZeneca vaccine arrive in Vietnam

The latest shipment marks the fifth delivery and the largest batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine to arrive in Vietnam so far.

The delivery is part of a contract signed by the Vietnam Vaccine Joint Stock Company (VNVC) last year to purchase 30 million vaccine doses developed by Oxford/AstraZeneca. Currently, the country has received more than 3.1 million doses under the contract.

Since the start of February, Vietnam has received more than 11.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine doses from AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Vero Cell.

Of the total received, 2.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been sponsored by the COVAX Facility, whilst two million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been donated by the United States and channeled through the COVAX Facility. In addition, approximately four million vaccine doses have been donated by various other countries.

Furthermore, more than 194,000 doses of the vaccine have been ordered from Pfizer/BioNTech.

According to the schedule, three million more doses of the Moderna vaccine donated by the US via the COVAX Facility will arrive in the country on July 25.

Moreover, Vietnam will also receive an additional 1.6 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine by July 30.

Nitin Kapoor, president for Asia Area Frontier Markets at AstraZeneca and chairman and General Director of AstraZeneca Vietnam, emphasised that the company’s relentless efforts to deliver its vaccine in July offer timely support in the country’s ongoing COVID-19 battle.

At present, roughly 8.6 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine have been shipped to Vietnam.

He therefore pledged to continue working closely with the Ministry of Health, WHO, UNICEF, and VNVC to deliver the vaccines to Vietnam in the fastest and safest manner possible in order to help Vietnamese people overcome the current challenging period and return life to normal as swiftly as possible.