The Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC) handed over a batch of 1,209,400 AstraZeneca vaccine doses to the Health Ministry in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) on August 22.

It is the ninth batch of a 30 million dose deal between AstraZeneca and the VNVC, with support from the Ministry of Health, according to the Director of the VNVC, Vu Thi Thu Ha.

A box that contains AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses. Photo: The UK Embassy in Vietnam

“The consignment landed at the Tan Son Nhat Airport in HCMC on Thursday night and has been placed in cold storage. The batch was handed over to the ministry after three days of completing quality inspection procedures,” Ha said.

She stressed that the delivery took place before HCMC tightens social distancing measures from 0:00am on August 23.

Since July 9, over 6.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been sent to Vietnam via the VNVC, bringing the total to about 7 million doses.

Vietnam has so far received around 14.3 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, accounting for around 62% of all available vaccine doses in the country. They were delivered either through contracts, global vaccine sharing mechanism Covax, or foreign aids.

The country has vaccinated more than 17 million people with at least one shot, and over 1.6 million people have been fully vaccinated. It aims to vaccinate 70% of its 96 million population by next year.

50,000 more Remdesivir vials against Covid-19 arrive in Vietnam

Remdesivir has been a much-sought-after drug to treat Covid-19 globally. Photo: suckhoedoisong.vn

Another batch of 50,000 vials of Remdesivir touched down at Tan Son Nhat International Airport on late August 21.

The shipment is part of the 500,000 Remdesivir vials, which Vingroup, a leading Vietnamese multisectoral conglomerate, has imported from India and donated to the Ministry of Health for emergency treatment of Covid-19 in the country.

Remdesivir was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat Covid-19 patients from October 22, 2020, and has been a much-sought-after drug to treat Covid-19 globally.

With a total of 500,000 vials, the drugs are capable of supporting the treatment of about 80,000 to 100,000 Covid-19 patients in Vietnam.

Earlier, Vietnam received 70,000 vials of Remdesivir, which were distributed to many medical facilities in provinces and cities to treat Covid-19 patients.

At the time of writing, the country has recorded 343,972 local Covid-19 cases since the fourth coronavirus wave hit Vietnam in late April.