The Ministry of Finance said that it has submitted to relevant agencies the financial plan to buy vaccines for mass vaccinations as proposed by the Ministry of Health.

All businesses, organizations and provinces are allowed to negotiate with suppliers of legal vaccine sources, but they must contact qualified agencies.

The electronics, textile and garment, footwear, wooden furniture and dairy sectors have proposed that the Government allow them to seek vaccine sources and pay for vaccinations at their enterprises so they can maintain production.

President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Sunday sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, asking for COVID-19 vaccine support for Vietnam as the country is facing a devastating fourth wave of infections.

Secretary of the Hanoi Party Committee Dinh Tien Dung said that with a population of about 10 million, Hanoi needs more than VND1 trillion to realize the goal of giving free Covid-19 vaccinations (the first dose) for its people.

The United States will assist countries, including Vietnam, to get access to a roll-out of its 80 million doses through the United Nation-managed COVAX Facility and other partners.

Vietnam has yet to offer COVID-19 vaccinations to foreign citizens residing and working in the country, but a spokesperson for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry has said that these vaccinations will be considered moving forward.

The two northern provinces of Bac Giang and Bac Ninh, Vietnam’s largest Covid-19 hotspots, have received 300,000 doses of vaccine for 300,000 workers in industrial parks. Vaccinations started on May 27.

The consistent policy of the Government is to urgently take appropriate measures to have enough vaccines as soon as possible to vaccinate the people on a large scale.

Recently, some businessmen told me that they are willing to contribute money to the Government to buy vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus if the Government launches a fund to supplement the budget shortage.

Along with the 5K message, Vietnam is strictly implementing three counterattacks: large-scale testing; implementation of a vaccine strategy; and application of technology for Covid-19 tracing.

The Government has issued Resolution No. 09 dated May 18, 2021 on the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son on May 19 held phone talks with British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Dominic Raab, 

Vietnam is expected to get 31 million COVID-19 vaccine doses developed by US-based firm Pfizer in the third and fourth quarters of 2021, said the Ministry of Health (MoH).

Vietnam’s Prime Minister said purchasing vaccine is an urgent task and must be done at the earliest.

As planned, 1,682,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine provided by the Covax Facility arrived in Vietnam on May 16.

The US announcement to support the waiver of IP protection on Covid-19 vaccine has not been the good news that was previously expected.

Last week, my friend told me that his daughter, who is studying in the US, had just been vaccinated against Covid-19 just one day after returning in the US to attend college. 

A total of 892,454 people in Vietnam have been given COVID-19 vaccine shots to date, according to Tuesday's morning report from the National Expanded Programme on Immunisation (NEPI).

Compared with neighboring countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, the rate of vaccination against Covid-19 in Vietnam is still low, accounting for only 0.86% of the population.