HCMC to receive 600,000 more Covid-19 vaccine doses

The new batch of vaccines will be transferred to 21 districts and Thu Duc City on Monday, said Nguyen Hoai Nam, deputy director of the municipal Health Department.

The city has administered 2.97 million vaccine doses as of Monday noon.

If more vaccines are not allocated in time, the city could run short by the end of Monday, the Health Department said Sunday.

HCMC has been boosting the progress of its vaccination program with a fifth campaign launched on July 22.

Accordingly, the city aimed to inject all people from 18 and above, including migrants and foreigners. During its four previous campaigns, the city had vaccinated just 991,322 people, with 48,107 getting two jabs.

On Tuesday, the city of 13 million, including migrants, entered its sixth campaign, continuing to have all people over 18 across the city vaccinated.

The same day, the city administration sent a document to Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, head of the Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control, requesting 5.5 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from Aug. 5 to 31 to immunize seven million residents above 18.

Following the city’s proposal, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh requested the Ministry of Health to continue prioritizing to the supply of vaccines to southern localities, including HCMC, and simultaneously, develop plans to allocate the next batches.

The biggest city in Vietnam and the epicenter of the country’s ongoing Covid-19 wave, HCMC has been allocated the most vaccines among all localities, at more than four million doses.

The city has recorded 124,153 community Covid-19 cases so far in the wave that broke out in late April, with 2,744 fatalities, as confirmed by the Health Ministry.

Around 20 percent of the city's population have received their first Covid vaccine doses, and 1 percent been fully vaccinated.