Deputy PM has 'slight' side effects after 2nd dose of Vietnamese Covid vaccine

"When I got the first shot in late February, I felt slightly groggy and had no fever," he said while speaking to correspondents on Thursday.

"When I received my second shot late last month, I had a mild fever. The dizziness was more evident than last time, but it was gone two days later."

Dam was one of 560 volunteers in the second phase of human trials.

"My blood test results after getting the second shot showed that the antibody concentration was very high." But he warned that all indigenous Covid-19 vaccines are in the trial phase and one could not say for sure when the first would roll out.

None of the volunteers so far have experienced serious side effects.

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam gets his second shot of Vietnamese vaccine Nanocovax as part of its human trials in Hanoi, March 26, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Dinh Nam.

Dam said since early 2020, when the pandemic first broke, the government wanted to quickly produce vaccines domestically since the country Vietnam is populous and not wealthy.

Even at that time he was determined to volunteer for human trials for the first made Vietnamese vaccine, he revealed.

In December Nanocovax, produced by the Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC, began the first phase of human trials, but only accepted volunteers aged below 50, meaning the 58-year-old Dam was not eligible.

So he decided to sign up for the second phase, which called for volunteers aged 18 to 75.

"As the head of the coronavirus task force, I need to do everything I can so that we have the vaccine at the earliest."

Nguyen Ngo Quang, deputy head of the Administration of Science, Technology and Training, said the vaccine has created large amounts of antibodies in volunteers and proven effective against mutant strains too.

The second phase would allow researchers to see how exactly immunogenic Nanocovax is.

The vaccine is expected to enter its third phase of human trials in May and complete it by the end of the third quarter, three months earlier than scheduled.

The government has approved AstraZeneca's ChAdOx1 vaccine and Russia's Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use.

While speeding up indigenous vaccines, the country is looking to procure around 150 million doses to cover 70 percent of its population by 2022.