A medical worker in Hà Đông General Hospital in Hà Nội is vaccinated with COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccine. — VNA/VNS Photo Phan Anh Tuấn

HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam is about to launch the largest-ever vaccination campaign with around 150 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to be injected, Health Minister Nguyễn Thành Long has said.

Addressing a conference on the implementation of the national COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Tuesday, Long said that eight storage facilities will be installed, with one in the High Command of Hà Nội, and seven in military regions across the nation.

All vaccine storage facilities must meet Good Storage Practices (GSP) standards to ensure vaccine quality, he said.

About 15,000 vaccination stations have assigned sufficient human resources and accounts to update and publicise the vaccination process, the number of used doses and the number of people vaccinated, he added.

During the campaign, all vaccination stations will be strictly supervised by an online control system, with information on the numbers of people getting injections as well as vaccine doses inoculated to be publicised.

“Each person will receive a message informing them about the vaccination and inviting them to get vaccinated. After they register for the vaccination, they will receive another message about vaccination time and place,” Long said.

“When people arrive at the vaccination place, they will show their QR codes of health declaration and undergo a medical check. Those who meet medical requirements will be injected and confirmed “vaccinated” on the smartphone app that they installed,” Long said, the online vaccination management would facilitate the management of “vaccine passports” in the future.

For those without smartphones, they will receive a text message with detailed information about the vaccination, Long said.

Long said that to realise such plan, it was necessary to speed up the implementation of e-health records and vaccination registration via smartphone app and text message.

When people received the messages, they should reply so that as soon as vaccines are available, they could be invited to get them.

After receiving a vaccine dose, people will receive a message every two hours to monitor their post-vaccination health.

The national steering committee on vaccination would work around the clock to oversee and direct the vaccination drive.

Deputy Minister of Information and Communication Nguyễn Huy Dũng said that the ministry and companies were making efforts to complete an IT vaccination system.

“As soon as the detailed scheme of the vaccination drive is finalised, we will have a trial version three days later which the Health Minister will examine. We will need another three days after that to complete the final version,” Dũng said.

By Tuesday afternoon, nearly 1.65 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in Việt Nam and 63,636 people across the country received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to health authority’s announcement on Wednesday morning. —VNS