An elderly woman in Phú Nhuận District, HCM City, receives COVID-19 vaccine . — VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Vũ

HCM CITY — The HCM City health sector plans to provide third vaccine shots to 6.3 million people who have been fully vaccinated in an effort to boost their immunity against COVID-19 beginning on December 10.

An "additional dose" is intended to improve immunocompromised people’s response to their first and second dose of vaccine, but a "booster dose" is given to other people when the immune response to the first and second dose is likely to have waned over time.

As for the additional dose, HCM City plans to give it to people who are aged 18 or older with immunocompromised status (organ transplant, cancer, HIV or use of immunosuppressive drugs in the past six months) and have had the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at least 28 days prior to the booster. People aged 50 and over are given priority.

The booster dose will be offered to people 18 years and older who had the second dose of the vaccine at least six months ago. Priority groups are people with underlying diseases, people needing long-term care at medical facilities, people aged 50 or older, and people who directly test, care for and treat COVID-19 patients.

In December, the city will need more than 64,2000 doses of AstraZeneca; next January, 29,400 doses; February, 235,000 doses; March, over 3.1m million doses; April, more than 2.2 million doses of AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Sinopharm's Vero Cell vaccines; May, 422,000 doses; and June, over 157,000 doses of AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Vero Cell and Sputnik V vaccines.

Vaccines reserved for additional or booster doses need to comply with the Ministry of Health’s guidance. 

Additional doses or booster doses will be the same type of vaccine as the earlier shots or an mRNA vaccine. If previous injections were mixed vaccines, additional or booster shots will use the mRNA vaccine type.

If the first or second dose was the Vero Cell vaccine, the booster dose will be of the same type, an mRNA vaccine, or a viral vector vaccine.

As of December 5, more than 7.92 million people aged 18 and over in HCM City had received the first vaccine dose. Of the number, nearly 6.82 million people have received the second dose. — VNS