COVID-19 vaccination in Vietnam

COVID-19 vaccination in Vietnam

Number of available vaccine doses by locality (as of 27 April 2021):   <10,000   10,000-100,000   100,001-500,000   500,001-1 million   >1 million
Date	March 8, 2021 (2021-03-08)-present
Location	Vietnam
Cause	COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam
Target	Immunization against COVID-19
Organised by	Vietnam's Ministry of Health
Participants	506,435 people with at least one dose administered of AstraZeneca
Outcome	0.52% of the Vietnamese population has received at least one dose of a vaccine

Number of people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Vietnam

The COVID-19 vaccination in Vietnam is an ongoing immunization campaign against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), in response to the ongoing pandemic in the country. Following the approval of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on 30 January 2021, vaccinations commenced on 8 March 2021. The Sputnik V was later approved for use on 23 March 2021.

This is the country's largest-ever immunization campaign with over 150 million doses. The country is expected to reach its vaccination coverage target of 80% in June 2022.

History

In August 2020, the Vietnamese government announced that they had signed up for 50 to 150 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine from Russia. The Russians will also donate a number of machines, biological products and equipment to Vietnam for COVID-19 prevention, including their vaccine. In the meantime, Vietnamese researchers will still continue developing the country's own vaccine.

In February 2021, the health ministry had suggested the government to approve COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca, Moderna and Sputnik V for domestic inoculation. Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said the vaccine has been approved under emergent circumstances during the outbreak in Hải Dương and Quảng Ninh province. AstraZeneca has pledged to provide Vietnam with around 30 million doses in 2021, beginning in April (1.48 million doses), May (2.76 million doses), June (5.04 million doses), July (7.32 million doses), and August (13.27 million doses).

Besides the deal with AstraZeneca, Vietnam is also stepping up negotiations with Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Gamaleya.

National Deployment and Vaccination plan (NDVP) was signed off by Deputy Minister of Health on 9 February 2021. Vietnam will receive the feedback of the plan from NDVP review committee as one of the required steps to receive COVID-19 vaccines through COVAX Facility – a global mechanism for developing, manufacturing, supplying and procuring COVID-19 vaccines for all country, especially for low and middle-income economies. Through COVAX, it is confirmed that Vietnam will receive 30 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine in 2022. The first batch of vaccines sourced via Covax mechanism, containing 811,200 doses, arrived in Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport on 1 April 2021.

Vaccines on order

The government began to procure doses of COVID-19 vaccines from various sources:

Vaccine	Origin	Progress	Doses ordered	Approval	Deployment	Notes
Oxford–AstraZeneca	UK/Sweden	phase III clinical trials	60 million	30 January 2021	8 March 2021	Including 38.9 million donated by COVAX Facility. Produced by SK Bioscience (South Korea)
Sputnik V	Russia	phase III clinical trials	50-60 million (presumably)	23 March 2021	Pending	1,000 doses donated by Russia. In talks with manufacturer to obtain licence rights to produce in Vietnam
Pfizer–BioNTech	US/Germany	phase III clinical trials	31 million	Pending	Pending	The first batch is expected to be delivered in 2022
Moderna	US	phase III clinical trials	20 million	Pending	Pending	The first batch is expected to be delivered at the end of 2021
Nanocovax	Vietnam	phase II clinical trials	Able to produce 60 million doses each year	Pending	Pending
COVIVAC	Vietnam	phase I clinical trials	Able to produce 6-30 million doses each year	Pending	Pending
Vabiotech	Vietnam	phase I clinical trials		Pending	Pending

• Even when the Chinese announced it would provide priority access to Sinovac and Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine, Vietnam is the only ASEAN nation that has yet to publicly state if it will use this due to anti-China sentiment among the public.
• For locally produced COVID-19 vaccines, the MOH expects to have the first batch ready for use at the end of the third quarter of 2021. These vaccines can be put into the country's vaccination campaign in 2022 to ensure supply source and health security, overcome the difficulties when purchasing foreign vaccines. The two locally produced vaccines, Nanocovax and COVIVAC, were put on trial on January to March 2021, respectively, with Nanocovax recognised in official WHO data.

Vaccines in trial stage

Vaccine	Type (technology)	Phase I	Phase II	Phase III
Nanocovax	Subunit	Completed	Completed	Not yet
COVIVAC	Viral vector	In progress	Not yet	Not yet
Vabiotech COVID-19 vaccine	Subunit	In progress	Not yet	Not yet

Rollout schedule

VNVC – the company in charge of importing and storing vaccines in Vietnam, said it is ready to have staff and facilities to store up to 170 million doses of vaccine. It has 49 provincial separate vaccine warehouses, 2 cold conditions warehouses, and 3 deep negative conditions warehouses for storing vaccines at a temperature of -40 to -86°C. In February 2021, the VNVC system's service capacity is up to 100,000 customers per day and can increase capacity to serve up to 4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines per month.

Vietnam's vaccination plan for 2021

Group	Total of people	Vaccination coverage (%)	Number of vaccinators
First quarter
Medical staff	500,000	95%	475,000
People directly involved in pandemic prevention	116,000		110,200
Total	616,000		585,200
Second quarter
Customs officers	9,200	95%	8,740
Diplomats	4,080		3,876
Military forces	1,027,000		975,650
Police forces	304,000		288,800
Teachers	550,000		522,500
Total	1,894,280		1,799,566
Third & fourth quarter
Teachers	750,000	95%	712,500
Above 65 years old	7,600,000		7,220,000
Essential workers (aviation, transport, tourism staff, utility workers, etc.)	1,930,000		1,833,500
People with chronic health issues	7,000,000		6,650,000
Total	17,280,000		16,416,000

According to Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan, to get protection for the majority of the population, Vietnam needs to diversify supplies of vaccines, which including locally manufactured vaccines and maximising the resources from the businesses and local administration's budgets in addition to the government's budget to get the vaccination programme running. The budget needed to give vaccine shots for 20% of the population is estimated at 6.739 trillion VND ($293.67 million USD), but over 90% of this cost is funded by the COVAX Facility. The government will contribute 24 billion VND, the remaining comes from municipal and provincial governments and private sources.

Progress to date

Vietnam vaccinations line chart

Vietnam vaccinations bar graph

Vaccination (as of 4 May 2021)
Doses administered	511,435 +1,580
Total population	97,580,000
At least one dose	Per 100 people	Fully vaccinated
511,435	0.524	No data

117,600 doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine arrived at Tan Son Nhat international airport in Ho Chi Minh City on 24 February. On 16 March, Vietnam received 1,000 doses of Sputnik V from Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. The first batch of vaccines sourced via Covax mechanism, containing 811,200 doses, arrived in Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport on 1 April 2021. It expected that a total of 150 million doses would be available by the end of 2021.

Vietnam's COVID-19 vaccination programme began on 8 March 2021, administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to medical workers in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hải Dương province. As of 29 April 2021, 506,435 people have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

Vaccinations by locality

Vaccine allocation plan by city & province in Vietnam

Locality	Number of doses
63 cities & provinces	928,800
An Giang	18,400
Bạc Liêu	6,900
Bắc Ninh	15,400
Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu	6,600
Bắc Giang	16,100
Bắc Kạn	2,000
Bến Tre	9,300
Bình Dương	16,800
Bình Định	8,400
Bình Phước	11,200
Bình Thuận	6,700
Cà Mau	8,500
Cần Thơ	6,700
Cao Bằng	5,600
Đà Nẵng	6,700
Đắk Lắk	15,850
Đắk Nông	9,000
Điện Biên	8,200
Đồng Nai	16,800
Đồng Tháp	18,500
Gia Lai	17,800
Hà Giang	11,800
Hà Nam	4,500
Hà Nội	78,480
Hà Tĩnh	7,300
Hải Dương	56,700
Hải Phòng	16,300
Hậu Giang	5,700
Hồ Chí Minh City	67,200
Hòa Bình	6,700
Hưng Yên	9,800
Khánh Hòa	7,070
Kiên Giang	17,400

Locality	Number of doses
63 cities & provinces	928,800
Kon Tum	8,400
Lai Châu	2,300
Lâm Đồng	6,700
Lạng Sơn	7,300
Lào Cai	21,700
Long An	17,700
Nam Định	9,600
Nghệ An	18,500
Ninh Bình	5,600
Ninh Thuận	3,400
Phú Thọ	9,900
Phú Yên	5,600
Quảng Bình	6,800
Quảng Nam	8,700
Quảng Ngãi	6,700
Quảng Ninh	13,100
Quảng Trị	3,400
Sóc Trăng	8,700
Sơn La	6,700
Tây Ninh	15,350
Thái Bình	12,800
Thái Nguyên	10,400
Thanh Hóa	20,200
Thừa Thiên Huế	6,700
Tiền Giang	11,600
Trà Vinh	7,400
Tuyên Quang	4,500
Vĩnh Long	7,400
Vĩnh Phúc	6,200
Yên Bái	4,500
Public security and military personnel	129,350
Quality validation	1,200
(Data of 18 April 2021)

Adverse reaction reporting

Of the 69 medical staff at Gia Lai Field Hospital who administered AstraZeneca vaccine on 9 March 2021, 8 had mild side effects and one female nurse had severe side effects. Five minutes after injection, this nurse (with a history of bronchial asthma) experienced symptoms of perioral numbness, vomiting, dizziness, chest tightness and difficulty breathing. As of 17 March 2021, in 20,000 people were injected, 4,078 cases had common reactions like muscle pain, headaches, diarrhoea, fever or hives, five with anaphylaxis grade II and one grade III case, all of these case are in stable conditions. The health ministry has asked local health authorities which face serious post-injection reactions to set up a professional council to evaluate the causes. There has not been a single case of severe blood clots reported in some European nations.

Public opinion

A poll conducted from October to December 2020 found that Vietnam had one of the highest vaccine acceptance rate in the world. 98% of people surveyed responded they would definitely or probably get vaccinated when a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available.