Vietnam to buy additional 20 million Pfizer vaccine doses

The Vietnamese Government has agreed to buy a further 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, as part of the deal for 31 million doses of the vaccine as adopted by the Ministry of Health in May.

The Ministry of Health will be responsible for the purchase of the vaccine as swiftly as possible as Vietnam is projected to vaccinate 70 percent of its population against COVID-19 to achieve herd community by early next year.

The nation received the first one million of Pfizer doses in July, while another three million are set to be delivered this month. The remaining 47 million doses are expected to be delivered in fourth quarter of the year.

Earlier in June Vietnam also consented to buy 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from the Vietnam Vaccine Joint Stock Company (VNVC).

The country has so far received 19 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from the deal with VNVC, the global vaccine access mechanism Covax, and as support from other nations. This consists of 11.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, 12,000 doses of Sputnik V, 746,000 doses of Pfizer, more than 5 million doses of Moderna, and 1.5 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine.

As of August 14, more than 13.7 million people nationwide received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and more than 1.2 million have been fully vaccinated.