Vietnam allocates $332 mln to buy 61 mln Covid vaccine doses

By Viet Tuan June 30, 2021 | 08:51 pm PT

A medical worker holds up a box containing the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy.

The government will provide VND7.65 trillion ($332.3 million) for the health ministry to buy 61 million doses of AstraZeneca and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines.

The Ministry of Health will purchase 31 million doses from Pfizer and 30 million AstraZeneca doses from the Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC), which had bought the vaccines in the first place and had the first batch delivered to Vietnam in February.

The money will come from the government’s coffers and the Covid-19 vaccine fund.

The ministry will require VND37 billion to transport, distribute and store vaccination tools for vaccines acquired through global mechanism Covax and other sources.

So far Vietnam has received around 4.5 million doses through Covax, commercial contracts and from other countries.

It aims to secure 150 million doses this year to cover 70 percent of the population.

Around 3.7 million people have been immunized so far, with over 193,000 getting both shots.