A man gets a shot of the Covid-19 vaccine. The Ministry of Health has urged provinces and cities to speed up the Covid-19 vaccination - PHOTO: VNA

HCMC - Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long has sent a dispatch asking provinces and cities, mainly Covid-19-hit ones, to speed up the Covid-19 inoculation process and increase immunization coverage.

During the vaccination process, the provinces and cities must follow inoculation steps and the directives from the ministry, ensure safety and apply online health record systems to monitor the health condition of vaccinated people.

To ensure the country’s inoculation process runs on schedule, Minister Long also told the provinces and cities to continue to give vaccines to priority groups in a fair and effective manner.

The Ministry of Health has allocated several kinds of Covid-19 vaccines such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna to many provinces and cities to start Covid-19 vaccination campaigns, with HCMC receiving the highest volume of doses, Long said.

On July 21, over 31,200 doses were administered, taking the total number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered to people nationwide to over 4.36 million. Some 325,000 people have been fully vaccinated with two shots, the local media reported.

However, some experts said that the vaccination process was still slower than expected. Since early July, some 20,000-40,000 doses have been administered each day, while the number of vaccine doses arriving in Vietnam is rising.

On July 25, three million doses of the Moderna vaccine donated by the United States will arrive in the country, according to the ministry.