Vietnam Covid vaccine fund gets $4.4 mln in 1st week

The Ministry of Finance, which manages the fund, will make public all the contributions, either on its official website or the Vietnam State Treasury’s website.

The money in it will be used only for two purposes: buying vaccines from abroad and producing indigenous ones, the ministry said.

Vietnam aims to procure 150 million doses of vaccines to cover 70 percent of its population this year, the health ministry announced earlier and estimated it to cost VND25.2 trillion ($1 billion).

The government is expected to provide VND16 trillion of this, and cities and provinces and contributions from private sources will make up the rest.

A state treasury official, who asked not to be named, told VnExpress that the ministry would arrange enough funds to get the vaccines for everyone.

The main funding would still come from the government, but all contributions from businesses and the public would help reduce the burden on it and be deeply appreciated, the official said.

Several major companies have pledged more than VND2.3 trillion ($99 million).

Vietnam began a Covid-19 vaccination program on March 8 using the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine that arrived either through commercial contracts or Covax.

It has received around 2.5 million doses through Covax and over 400,000 of the 30 million doses it has ordered from AstraZeneca.