HCM City aims to provide vaccine doses to 70 per cent of its residents aged 18 and over by the end of August. Photo tuoitre.vn

HCM CITY — HCM City plans to provide vaccinations to 70 per cent of residents aged 18 and over in the sixth vaccination phase, the vice chairman of the city’s People Committee, Dương Anh Đức, said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The sixth phase of the vaccination drive, which began on Tuesday, will take place until the end of this month.

The city has asked the Government to allocate more than five million doses of vaccines for the sixth phase.

The city has deployed 1,200 vaccination teams. If each unit delivers 250 injections per day, the city will reach the target of 300,000 shots a day, according to Đức.

According to the plan, 800,000 individuals will get the second shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and 200,000 people will receive the second shot of the Moderna vaccine by the end of this month.

The city, which has 6,966,626 residents aged 18 and older, needs 13.8 million vaccine shots to vaccinate 99 per cent of this group.

In the fifth phase of the city's COVID-19 vaccination programme from July 22 to August 3, as many as 920,329 doses of vaccines, including AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer, were administered to residents.

About 1,039 people had mild allergic reactions after the vaccination and received immediate medical treatment.

The city has received 2.5 million doses of vaccines. About two million people have been vaccinated with one jab, and 70,000 people have received two shots.

Since late April when the fourth wave began, there have been 161,482 locally transmitted cases in 62 provinces and cities, with HCM City accounting for more than 100,000 cases.

More than 6.2 million vaccine doses have been administered across the nation since inoculation began on March 8, with 712,860 people fully vaccinated. VNS