Pfizer vaccination stopped, resumed after HCMC death

However, the suspension was removed a few hours later after it was deemed that the death was not related to the vaccine.

The municipal Health Department Tuesday afternoon ordered several districts to stop using the FK0112 batch of Pfizer vaccine.

Department deputy director Nguyen Huu Hung said the suspension was ordered after the city recorded a fatality after a person was given a Pfizer vaccine shot from the lot.

However, a professional advisory council confirmed that the death was not related to the vaccine.

"The initial conclusion of the council was that there was no evidence of death related to the quality of the vaccine. As for the exact cause of death, we will have to wait for the forensic examination results," Hung said.

City authorities have not disclosed further information about the death including its timing.

A District 7 official said that on receiving the suspension order, the district switched to vaccinating people with the AstraZeneca vaccine and returned to the Pfizer vaccine later when the city announced that the FK0112 lot can be used.

Meanwhile, in Thu Duc City, several hundred Pfizer doses from the suspect lot were put aside for a few hours before vaccination was resumed.

Nguyen Thi Huynh Mai, office chief of the Health Department, said that the city has not made any official statement on stopping use of the Pfizer vaccine.

HCMC has so far received more than 640,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and has allocated them to 21 districts and Thu Duc City as part of the ongoing mass vaccination program.

The city is speeding up its campaign to fully inoculate all adults after more than 95 percent of people aged over 18 have received the first shot.

As of Monday, all people over 50 had got the first shot and 48.5 percent of them have been fully vaccinated, according to the city’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Across the city, more than 9.7 million doses have been administered with more than 2.95 million people getting two shots.

The vaccines that has been administered in the city so far are AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Sinopharm.

In many cases, people who get AstraZeneca as their first shot have received Pfizer as the second, as permitted by the Ministry of Health.