PM orders faster COVID-19 vaccination amid rising case number

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has urged the Ministry of Health and relevant ministries and agencies as well as the People’s Committees of cities and provinces nationwide to strictly implement his dispatch issued on July 25 regarding the speeding up of COVID-19 vaccination, the Government Office said in a statement.

Vaccination is still an effective measure against BA.4 and BA.5

The request was made amid the rising number of COVID-19 infections, with the detection of some new sub-variant of Omicron. Meanwhile, many localities have yet to complete the injection of the vaccines they had received.

According to the statement, the Acting Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan was asked to drastically direct the healthcare system from the central to the local levels to ensure COVID-19 vaccination progress and study the demands of particular locality until the end of the third quarter for adequate vaccine allocation.

The Ministry of Health was requested to coordinate with the Ministry of Information and Communications as well as relevant agencies to encourage people to get COVID-19 vaccine shots as scheduled.

Leaders of the People’s Committees of cities and provinces were assigned to direct the vaccination activities and bear the responsibility before the Party, State and the law on the results.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute, Omicron's new sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 have increased in the southern localities together with sub-variants BA.2. Meanwhile, sub-variant BA.2.12.1 has also been detected in the localities, where the outbreak of the Delta variant is causing a rise in the case number.

The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology reported that 21.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have yet to be administered, mostly Pfizer and Moderna. At the same time, 16 out of the 63 provinces and cities nationwide have yet to submit their registration of vaccine demand for the last six months of the year as requested by the Ministry of Health.

Meanwhile, the progress of the injection of the first and second booster doses as well as the vaccination of children between 5-11 years old have lagged behind scheduled.

Representatives of the World Health Organisation and the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Vietnam underlined that COVID-19 is still a global public health emergency, stressing that vaccination is still an effective measure against BA.4 and BA.5, along with influenza A and common flu./.

VNA