A health worker is injected with COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday morning in the Central Highland province of Gia Lai. — VNA/VNS Photo

GIA LAI — The COVID-19 vaccination drive reached the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai on Tuesday, making it the fourth locality in Việt Nam to vaccinate people on the front lines of fighting the pandemic after Hà Nội, HCM City and Hải Dương Province.

Sixty-one medical workers and staff at Gia Lai Province’s Field Hospital and 39 others in the province’s General Hospital are expected to get vaccinated on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Another 1,800 vaccine doses will be transferred to Gia Lai Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and then distributed to lower-level healthcare facilities where people in priority groups will receive vaccine shots.

According to head of the Central Highland Region’s Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology Viên Chinh Chiến, work to prepare and carry out the vaccination drive in the province was done excellently.

The province’s Field Hospital has arranged facilities and staff to offer medical assistance to anyone reporting side effects from the vaccine, Chiến said.

On Monday, Việt Nam started its COVID-19 vaccination drive by inoculating 377 medical workers at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in HCM City and National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hà Nội and in Hải Dương Province.

They are among frontline workers in 13 provinces and cities who will get the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine as the country launches the largest vaccination drive in its history to inoculate 70 per cent of the country's 100 million population to achieve herd immunity.

The AstraZeneca vaccine has been granted the Emergency Use Listing by the World Health Organization for active immunisation to prevent COVID-19 in individuals aged from 18.

According to the National Expanded Programme on Immunisation, no post-injection reactions have been reported among the 377 people who received COVID-19 vaccines shots on Monday.

Besides Gia Lai Province, on Tuesday, Hà Nội’s Health Department provided the COVID-19 vaccination to 30 medical workers of Thanh Nhàn Hospital.

Local media in the vaccination room in Hà Nội's Thanh Nhàn Hospital on Tuesday morning. Medical workers who directly treated COVID-19 patients are among those to get vaccinated first in VN's vaccination drive. — VNA/VNS Photo Quang Thái

Dr Nguyễn Trọng Hưng of the hospital’s Occupational Diseases Department was the first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine shot there and said he had confidence in the vaccine.

“Together with the vaccine, good public awareness and strict implementation of preventive measures would be effective tools for us to protect the community from the pandemic,” he said.

Dr Trần Văn Cảm, of the hospital’s Emergency Department, said he volunteered to get vaccinated under a pilot vaccination programme in Thanh Nhàn Hospital and his family members supported him.

“I was a little bit nervous after the injection but now, I feel okay,” Cảm said.

Under Hà Nội’s vaccination plan, it will receive 8,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses for people of priority groups. The city’s vaccination drive will be carried out from March 9-18 in all 30 districts in the city.

Medical workers in the city's other hospitals will be inoculated from March 12 to March 15. — VNS