Residents in HCMC get vaccinated against Covid-19. An additional 1.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine arrived at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCMC this morning, July 23 - PHOTO: VNA

HCMC - An additional 1.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, as part of the 30 million doses ordered by the Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC), arrived at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCMC this morning, July 23.

This is the fifth vaccine shipment and the largest-ever batch that AstraZeneca has sent to Vietnam under a contract with VNVC.

The first shipment with 117,600 doses was handed over to Vietnam on February 2, the second with 288,000 doses arrived in the country on May 25, the third with 580,000 doses came to the country on July 9 and the fourth with 921,400 doses was transported to Vietnam on July 15. As such, up to now, AstraZeneca has shipped over 3.1 million doses to Vietnam under the purchase contract.

Nitin Kapoor, chairman and general director of AstraZeneca Vietnam, said that the shipments that had arrived in Vietnam in July reflected the British drugmaker’s efforts to help Vietnam fight off the pandemic.

As of today, Vietnam had taken delivery of some 8.6 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine through the VNVC contract with AstraZeneca, the COVAX Facility and donations from other countries.

Vu Thi Thu Ha, supply director of VNVC, said that tens of millions of AstraZeneca vaccine doses under the purchase contract would arrive in Vietnam in the coming days. VNVC will continue to seek and access other sources of high-quality vaccines to help Vietnam reach herd immunity soon.

As of July 22, over 4.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine had been administered in Vietnam.

HCMC is kicking off the fifth round of Covid-19 vaccination, with some one million doses of the AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.