Medical workers prioritized for COVID-19 vaccination.
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(VOVWORLD) - Vietnam’s COVID-19 vaccination drive began on Monday with frontline medical workers in Hai Duong, Hanoi, and HCM City being the first recipients of the Astra Zeneca vaccine.
In the HCM City Hospital of Tropical Diseases, which treats COVID-19 patients and conducts virus research, the vaccination area in the Outpatient Department comprises a screening room, an injection room, and a post-injection room. 900 medical workers will be vaccinated in the first week.
Hai Duong province is the top priority in Vietnam’s vaccination program. The Ministry of Health has given the province 33,000 doses, the most for this phase of COVID-19 vaccination. The vaccination will take place at the Health Center in Kim Thanh district and at the provincial hospital for tropical diseases.
In Hanoi, 100 medical workers at the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases No 2 will be vaccinated first.
At a recent meeting on implementing the vaccination program, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said the first phase of vaccination will be conducted at 18 health care centers and hospitals which have COVID-19 patients in 13 epidemic-hit cities and provinces.
Minister Long says:'Priority is given to people on the frontline. Doctors and nurses treating COVID-19 patients and community disease prevention workers such as contact tracers and test sample collectors are at high risk and need protection.'
Each person needs two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines with 12-week break between doses. Vietnam now has more than 100,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and is expected to receive 1.3 million more this month from COVAX, an initiative by the WHO to distribute vaccines to poor countries. Vietnam hopes to receive 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the coming months to complete its largest ever vaccination program.
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