Minister Nguyen Thanh Long answers the press about the largest vaccination campaign in history

Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long, Head of the Steering Committee for the Covid-19 vaccination campaign. Photo: Minh Quyet/VNA

On the morning of July 10, Vietnam officially launched the largest vaccination campaign in history - vaccinating all people over the age of 18 against Covid-19 from July 2021 to April 2022.

Speaking to the press, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said that in the vaccination work, we always ensure maximum safety for the vaccinated, ensuring "safety wherever the vaccination is." In addition, screening, monitoring, and close supervision of post-vaccination health are carried out across the entire line.

Leading experts in many fields of treatment and prevention are always ready to support all injection sites to be able to handle everything promptly.

-Vietnam has officially launched the largest Covid-19 vaccination campaign in history, lasting 9 months. Could you tell us what is different about this campaign?

Minister Nguyen Thanh Long:With the great efforts of the Ministry of Health and other sectors, and the strong direction of the Government and the Prime Minister, from today (July 10), Vietnam will organize the largest vaccination campaign in history.

The campaign's biggest goal is to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible to protect people's health and lives. This campaign has many changes compared to Vietnam's long-standing National Immunization Program that has been implemented.

Firstly, regarding the transportation, distribution and preservation of vaccines, we have established a completely new preservation system based on the military force. Vaccines will be preserved in warehouses of military zones that the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Health have jointly established, meeting GSP preservation standards. Vaccines will then be transported to all injection points in districts and localities as quickly as possible, ensuring the requirements of vaccine quality standards.

Second, we mobilize a large force to organize vaccination at all mobile and fixed vaccination points. We rely on the network of grassroots medical systems of civilians and the medical system of the Army and Police to simultaneously deploy vaccination work, thereby increasing the progress of vaccine coverage for the people.

Third, to ensure maximum safety for those vaccinated, “safety is assured wherever vaccination is given,” screening, monitoring, and close post-vaccination health monitoring are implemented across the entire network. In addition, leading experts in many fields of treatment and prevention are always ready to support all vaccination sites to handle all matters promptly.

Fourth, the Ministry of Health has revised all professional guidelines on the principle of ensuring safety for the vaccinated.

Fifth, closely coordinate and thoroughly promote the application of information technology in vaccination management. Most notably, the application of "Electronic Health Book" with information on vaccination such as vaccination registration, vaccination diary, post-vaccination monitoring... From there, a code is formed for each vaccinated person to issue QR Code. The QR Code is the basis for ensuring the "vaccine passport" later.

Under the direction of the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Health is working closely to build an application platform for Covid-19 vaccination and testing.

Sixth, establish vaccine quality monitoring. The Steering Committee for the Vaccination Campaign has established a Subcommittee for Vaccination Quality Monitoring, which operates relatively independently to monitor all activities of the vaccination process from transportation, storage, distribution and vaccination.

Covid-19 vaccination for people in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Thanh Vu/VNA

These are the basic new points of this vaccination campaign, with the motto of how to have the most vaccines, fastest and safest for the people. That is the goal that the Government and the Prime Minister have assigned to the Ministry of Health.

-What is the scale of this vaccination campaign, Minister?

Minister Nguyen Thanh Long: It can be said that up to now, Vietnam has organized many vaccination campaigns, the most recent of which was the campaign to inject 23 million doses of measles-rubella vaccine for children. However, this campaign is deployed on a large scale, ensuring the vaccination of 150 million doses of vaccine (which Vietnam has been negotiating to purchase from now until April 2022) for people to increase vaccine coverage for people to achieve community immunity.

-Dear Minister, at this point, almost all people are interested in and looking forward to getting vaccinated against Covid-19. So when will we have enough vaccines for 70% of the population?

Minister Nguyen Thanh Long: This target was set from the beginning for all people over 18 years old. After calculation, the Ministry of Health submitted to the Politburo and the Government to issue a resolution on the issue of vaccination. Vietnam is trying to buy 150 million doses of vaccine to vaccinate the people.

However, due to the global scarcity of vaccines, although there have been purchase contracts since November 2020 and commitments since September 2020, we have only now received vaccines. This situation will continue until September 2021. It is expected that after September 2021, a large number of vaccines will arrive in Vietnam, so we set out to increase coverage for the people.

This is the reason why the Government Resolution stipulates the priority of vaccination, in which priority is given to the frontline forces against the epidemic, to localities with epidemics and to the frontline areas of socio-economic development to ensure the goal of both fighting the epidemic and developing the economy and society is achieved.

This is also the priority of the vaccination campaign in Vietnam, and we must also pay attention to all vaccination subjects. Finally, I want to emphasize an important point: Vaccination in the campaign is free.

- Thank you very much, Minister.!

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