A health worker prepares to inject COVID-19 vaccine for people in Hà Nội's Thanh Xuân District. — VNA/VNS Photo Minh Quyết

HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Health plans to issue guidelines on COVID-19 vaccinations for children aged from 12 to under 18 year olds, by October 15.

Deputy Minister of Health Đỗ Xuân Tuyên made the announcement on Monday at a national online meeting. He said that documents were being prepared for training courses relating to vaccines for children.

Expert agencies under the ministry are discussing how the vaccination should be conducted, at schools or their residential areas.

According to the Department of Preventive Medicine and the Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, by October 10, Việt Nam has received 87.7 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, of that 81.7 million doses have already been allocated. 

In the last seven days, 21.5 million doses of vaccine have been distributed.

In the first ten days of this month, about 26 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines arrived in Việt Nam.

“A large amount of COVID-19 vaccines are arriving in Việt Nam more frequently, increasing the access to vaccines and pushing vaccination drives,” Tuyên said.

So far, 55 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in Việt Nam,

Nearly 39 million adults, or 54.3 per cent of the country’s population, have received their first doses while 16 million people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“The vaccination must be ramped up further,” Tuyên said, noting that some localities have failed to administer them on schedule, such as Lai Châu, Yên Bái, Hà Giang, Lạng Sơn and Quảng Trị.

At the meeting, Deputy Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine Nguyễn Minh Hằng, said that from October 1 to 10, localities and units across the country have injected 11 million doses. 

Until now, eight out of 63 provinces and cities have vaccinated more than 90 per cent of the adult population with at least one shot.

Two other provinces have first-dose coverage of  70-80 per cent and four provinces with the coverage of 50-70 per cent.

Less than 50% of adults living in 49 other provinces have only had one shot so far.

Localities nationwide must develop specific vaccination plans so that the vaccines could be administered as soon as possible.

If localities were slow administering the vaccines they were allocated, the vaccines would be transferred to other localities, Tuyên said.

People working on the frontline including health workers, police, and community-based COVID-19 teams should continue being priority to get the vaccines as they are at high risks of infection, according to the deputy minister.

Other priority groups are people aged over 50 years old and those with underlying health conditions.

Workers at plants, industrial and economic zones should also be vaccinated to facilitate the resumption of production.

Tuyên asked authorities and enterprises to co-operate in making lists of foreigners who are living, working and studying in their areas to provide them with vaccination soon. — VNS