A student in Kiên Giang Province is injected with a COVID-19 vaccine. — VNA/VNS Photo Hồng Đạt

HÀ NỘI — More than 90 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in Việt Nam so far, according to the figures from the National COVID-19 Vaccine Portal on Monday.

Accordingly, among the total 90,803,650 doses, over 61 million people have been given one dose while more than 29 million have received the full two doses. On Sunday, more than 1 million doses were administered.

So far, the rate of one dose coverage in Việt Nam has reached over 83 per cent, and the rate for two doses was nearly 40 per cent of the population aged 18 years and over.

The latest milestone was achieved eight months after Việt Nam officially started its COVID-19 vaccination drive in early March with priority for frontline workers.

Thirteen out of 63 provinces and cities had given at least 1 dose of vaccine to over 95 per cent of the population aged 18 years and over. These are Hà Nội, Bắc Ninh, Quảng Ninh, Đà Nẵng, Khánh Hòa, Ninh Thuận, HCM City, Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu, Đồng Nai, Long An, Lâm Đồng, Vĩnh Long and Bình Dương.

Twelve localities had achieved coverage rate of two doses for over 50 per cent of the population 18 years and older including Long An, Quảng Ninh, Khánh Hòa, HCM City, Đồng Nai, Lạng Sơn, Bình Dương, Hà Nội, Bắc Ninh, Hà Nam, Ninh Bình and Đồng Tháp.

Regarding vaccines for children aged from 12-17, so far, inoculations have been carried out in HCM City, Bình Dương, Ninh Bình, Sóc Trăng, Đồng Nai, Quảng Ninh and Kiên Giang.

All injections are safe and there have been no cases of severe reactions reported after the jab.

Currently, about 850,000 doses have been given to children.

Some localities such as HCM City have proposed vaccinating children under 12.

However, experts recommended that such a programme must be carefully considered.

According to Deputy Minister of Health Trần Văn Thuấn, the results achieved in COVID-19 vaccination were very encouraging, however, there were still many obstacles and inadequacies in the organisation, the accuracy of injection data, and updates of injection results for people.

In order to ensure the vaccination roll-out is more effective, the Ministry of Health proposed the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Information and Communications to closely co-ordinate and assist the Ministry of Health in the application of information technology in the vaccination management.

The people's committees of provinces and cities were asked to instruct departments of health, and information and communications and the local police to effectively push the vaccination rate.

The Ministry of Information and Communications was responsible for connecting and sharing vaccination data on the COVID-19 Immunisation Management Platform to ensure secure and safe information in accordance with the law.

Information authentication was based on the principle that the health ministry authenticated information on vaccinations while the Ministry of Public Security authenticates information on personal identification. — VNS