Why is Nghe An the locality with the slowest Covid-19 vaccination rate?

On the afternoon of September 19, Mr. Tran Minh Tue - Deputy Director of Nghe An Department of Health said that the Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology has just decided to allocate 200,000 doses of Vero Cell vaccine (Sinopharm) to Nghe An, bringing the total number of vaccines allocated to Nghe An to 652,000 doses.

This is the first time Nghe An has been allocated the Sinopharm vaccine. Although the allocation decision has been made, according to Mr. Tue, it is expected that this amount of vaccine will not arrive in Nghe An until the end of next week.

A man in Nghe An receives the AstraZeneca vaccine. Photo: Tien Hung

Previously, Nghe An received 452,000 doses of vaccine, including 11,700 doses of Pfizer and the rest of AstraZeneca. Currently, Nghe An has injected more than 311,000 doses.

According to the Covid-19 Vaccination Portal, Nghe An has been in the group of localities with the lowest vaccination rate for many days now. (Calculated by the number of injections/number of vaccines allocated according to the decision). On the afternoon of September 19, according to the Vaccination Portal's calculations, Nghe An had only "disbursed" more than 68% of the allocated vaccines, ranking second from the bottom, just above Ha Tinh with a "disbursement" rate of more than 67%.

However, according to Mr. Tran Minh Tue, these calculations have made the public misunderstand that Nghe An is implementing the vaccination slowly. Meanwhile, the actual vaccination progress is still on schedule, without any delay.

Information on the Covid-19 Vaccination Portal.

"As soon as the allocation decision is made, they will immediately update the data on the Covid-19 Vaccination Portal. From there, the data in the allocated section will be pushed up. The number of doses administered remains the same. That's why the "disbursement" figure is low. In reality, it took more than a week after the allocation decision for the vaccines to arrive in Nghe An for us to start the vaccination campaign," Mr. Tue said, giving an example of the latest batch of 200,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine received by Nghe An. Although this number of vaccines only arrived in Nghe An on September 17, nearly 10 days ago, this information was published on the Covid-19 Vaccination Portal to be used as calculation data...

Below the table of localities with slow vaccination rates, the Vaccination Portal also noted that vaccination rates in some provinces may be low because they have not received vaccines according to the allocation decision. "The reason is that vaccines have been slow to arrive since the allocation decision was made, not that we are slow to vaccinate," Mr. Tue said, adding that currently, Nghe An province can vaccinate more than 100,000 doses per day.