Announcing the latest Covid-19 vaccination strategy with 16 priority groups
Vietnam's largest vaccination campaign is expected to last until the end of April 2022 to cover 70% of the population.
Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long has just approved a plan to implement the Covid-19 vaccination campaign in 2021-2022.
However, depending on the epidemic situation and supply capacity.Vaccine, this plan will be updated.
Achieving herd immunity by April 2022
The Minister of Health emphasized that the Covid-19 vaccine is a necessary and important solution to prevent the Covid-19 epidemic and promote socio-economic development. Countries around the world have begun implementing the largest vaccination program in human history.
In Vietnam, the Ministry of Health has made efforts to access vaccine supplies through many channels. To date, about 105 million doses from many suppliers have been committed to being allocated to Vietnam, of which about 5 million doses are gifts.
Vietnam aims to vaccinate at least 50% of people aged 18 and over by the end of 2021 and cover 70% by April 2022 to achieve herd immunity.
The vaccination campaign will be carried out nationwide from July 2021 with about 19,000 vaccination points at public and private facilities, inside and outside the health sector.
Due to the large number of vaccinations, Vietnam mobilized the entire political system to participate, from health, police, army, political and social organizations, youth unions, women's unions, etc.
In the current context, vaccines are prioritized for 4 groups of provinces and cities:
Group 1, provinces and cities with epidemics, in which priority is given to vaccination for people in epidemic areas.
Group 2: provinces and cities in key economic zones or piloting economic development projects of the Government.
Group 3, provinces and cities with many industrial parks, industrial clusters, and a large number of workers and residents.
Group 4, provinces and cities with borders, large traffic exchanges, and international border gates.
16 vaccination subjects, over 65 years old can still be vaccinated
Vietnam is vaccinating people over 18 years old and people over 65 years old (previously there was no vaccination indication for this group). The goal is to cover over 90% of vaccinations for groups with vaccination indications.
In particular, Vietnam prioritizes frontline forces in fighting the epidemic and frontline forces in promoting and developing the economy.
Specifically, there will be 16 priority groups, including:
1. People working in medical facilities, including public and private
2. People participating in epidemic prevention (members of the Anti-epidemic Steering Committee, working in quarantine areas, doing contact tracing, community Covid-19 teams, volunteers, reporters...)
3. Military forces
4. Police force
5. Vietnamese diplomatic staff and officials and their relatives sent abroad, people working in diplomatic agencies and international organizations operating in Vietnam.
6. Customs, immigration officers
7. Essential service providers, aviation, transportation, tourism, electricity and water service providers
8. Teachers, students, young doctors, people working in agencies, administrative units, law practice organizations, notaries, auctioneers... regularly come into contact with many people.
9. People with chronic diseases, people over 65 years old
10. People living in epidemic areas
11. The poor, social policy subjects
12. People who are authorized by competent authorities to go on business trips, study, work abroad or have a need to leave the country to go on business trips, study, and work abroad, foreign experts working in Vietnam
13. The subjects are employees and relatives of employees working at enterprises (industrial parks, export processing zones, transportation, credit, tourism enterprises, etc.), essential service businesses such as accommodation, food and beverage establishments, banks, health care, pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, etc., retail and wholesale establishments, markets, construction sites, and people in tourist areas.
14. Religious dignitaries and officials
15. Freelancers
16. Other subjects as decided by the Minister of Health or the Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee and proposed by vaccine aid units.
Schedule injections by the hour
In case of limited vaccine supply, the list of vaccination subjects and the schedule of vaccination by hour must be made before notifying people to register for vaccination. When there is enough vaccine, it is necessary to notify people to register for vaccination in advance.
People sign for vaccination and make medical declarations, update post-vaccination reactions on the Electronic Health Book application on their phones.
The transportation of vaccines will be handled by the Ministry of National Defense in coordination with the Expanded Immunization Project. The vaccines must be kept at 2-8 degrees Celsius throughout the entire transportation process.
Delivery time is no more than 3 days after receiving the vaccine batch certificate.
In which vaccines have been stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius and must not be stored at negative temperatures.
The Sputnik V vaccine must be stored at -25 to -15 degrees Celsius and must be stored in dry ice when delivered to vaccination sites. After thawing, any unused vaccine must be discarded.
The Ministry of Health requires at least one mobile emergency team at each cluster of 3-4 vaccination sites. Each provincial general hospital must keep at least five empty beds to be ready to handle serious post-vaccination complications.
