Medical workers at the HCM City Hospital for Tropical Diseases receive the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on March 8. HM City plans to vaccinate 8,000 more personnel on the frontlines by April 19. — VNS Photo Việt Dũng

HCM CITY — Around 8,000 COVID-19 frontline medical workers in HCM City will receive the AstraZeneca vaccine between March 22 and April 19.

The prioritised list comprises medical workers directly treating COVID patients, workers collecting samples and performing tests, contact tracers, people working in quarantine areas and transporting infected and suspected patients, and personnel in the health declaration department.

The city plans to have 95 per cent of everyone involved in combating the pandemic vaccinated.

The Việt Nam Vaccine JSC will be responsible for inoculating those who are the HCDC assigns to it in future.

Each vaccination site will have no more than 100 people at a time, with tables placed at safe distance from each other and the vaccines will be transported and distributed in compliance with safety guidelines.

People getting the shots will be screened and checked up before the vaccination, monitored for 30 minutes after the jab and told to monitor themselves at home for at least a week.

They will then be given a certificate of vaccination and a second shot after 12 weeks.

The HCM City Centre for Disease Control (HCDC) received 8,000 doses of the vaccine on March 10, and has organised training in vaccination for personnel at hospitals and other facilities involved in the inoculation programme.

The HCM City Hospital for Tropical Diseases on March 8 became the first to start in the city, and it and the 175 Military Hospital have vaccinated around 3,000 people so far.

According to the National Expanded Programme on Immunisation, 16 provinces and cities are currently carrying out the inoculation programme, with nearly 31,000 people so far getting shots.

In March and April Việt Nam will receive 5.6 million more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

By March 22,6,251 people had been vaccinated in Hà Nội, all of whom are in healthy condition.

From March 15-22, 2021, the Department of Health organised vaccinations for 6,063 medical staff in the city. The department will continue vaccinations this week in accordance with the plan for vaccine phase 1. More than 7,200 people in the capital will receive the vaccine by the end of this phase. 

Across the country, more than 30,900 people have received shots of COVID-19 vaccines.

Việt Nam's first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine, called Nanocovax, is expected to be available by the fourth quarter of this year and put into use in 2022.

The country has purchased 30 million COVID-19 vaccine doses developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. It expects to obtain 150 million doses for the whole population this year.— VNS