Nearly 600,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses arrive in HCMC

By Phan Anh August 6, 2021 | 01:04 am PT

A cold storage container for the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses arrives in HCMC's Tan Son Nhat Airport in July 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Phong Lan.

592,100 AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses arrived in HCMC's Tan Son Nhat International Airport Friday morning per VNVC contract.

The batch is the seventh of a 30-million dose contract between AstraZeneca and the Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC) with support from the Ministry of Health, according to a press release by AstraZeneca. Previous batches arrived in Ho Chi Minh City in February, May and July.

Around 11.5 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses have arrived in Vietnam, either through contracts, global vaccine access mechanism Covax or foreign aid, accounting for around 62 percent of all doses currently available in the country, the release stated.

Vietnam has vaccinated over eight million people against Covid-19 so far, with over 820,000 fully immunized.

The country aims to achieve herd immunity by next year through vaccinating 70 percent of its 96 million population.