Vials of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. — AFP/VNA Photo

HÀ NỘI — An additional donation of 1,499,940 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been delivered by the US to help Việt Nam's pandemic response, the US Embassy announced.

The vaccines were delivered through COVAX and arrived in Hà Nội late Saturday night directly from the Pfizer manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

This delivery follows three previous donations totaling six million vaccine doses that the United States has provided to Việt Nam through the COVAX Facility, including five million Moderna doses and one million Pfizer doses that arrived during US Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to the country.

“The United States and Việt Nam continue to build on our longstanding cooperation with more than US$1 billion investment in Việt Nam’s health infrastructure to strengthen Việt Nam’s capacity to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic,” an announcement from the US Embassy said.

“In addition to these donations of 7.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, the United States has committed more than $26.7 million in COVID-19 related assistance to Việt Nam since the start of the pandemic.”

As well as the 7.5 million vaccine doses the US donated through the COVAX Facility, Việt Nam has received 4,176,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from the COVAX, not including other bilateral donations to the country sent through the facility.

The COVAX Facility is co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI), GAVI – the Vaccine Alliance, World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF as key delivery partners.

The United States is the largest single country contributor to COVAX, and through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US government has contributed $4 billion to support procurement and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to 92 low- and middle-income economies.

At the Global COVID-⁠19 Summit on September 22, US President Joe Biden announced a bold new commitment by the US to supply an additional 500 million doses of Pfizer vaccine, bringing the US total commitment of donated vaccines to over 1.1 billion.

To date, Việt Nam has received more than 60 million vaccine doses. It has administered 43,658,818 vaccine shots so far, with more than 10 million people fully vaccinated, or about 10 per cent of the total population. — VNS