Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has urged municipalities and organizations to accelerate the delivery of booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines to all adults and children to prevent infection from the disease.
In a document sent to places and organizations on July 2, Chinh said the new sub-variant of Omicron (BA.5) has been detected in Vietnam, raising the risk of the disease outbreak again, stressing that administering the booster shots has been slow and action needs to be taken to speed up the process.
“Vietnam’s vaccination campaign has been successful in principle, but the rate of injection of booster doses for adults has been slow of late. There is no shortage of Covid-19 vaccines, so provinces and cities should accelerate vaccinations according to the Prime Minister’s instructions,” the document said.
Although vaccination for children between the ages of five and under 12 has been underway for nearly three months, progress is still slow. The prime minister asked the municipalities to speed it up.
Statistics from the Ministry of Health (MoH) said that all people over the age of 18 across the country had already received two doses of vaccine and more than 55% had received three doses. As for people between the ages of 12 and 17, the coverage of the first dose injection is 100% while the second dose is almost 97%.
Earlier, the Justice Department sent several documents urging locals to get enough vaccine doses to ensure high vaccination coverage.
Booster shots are essential to prevent Covid-19 infection
Speaking at a seminar on the matter held by the Government Portal on July 1, Prof. dr. Phan Trong Lan, director of the Department of Preventive Medicine under the MoH, said booster shots are essential to prevent Covid-19 infection.
“Most Vietnamese residents will be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 by February 2022. Nevertheless, antibody levels among vaccinated people will decline after four to six months,” Lan said.
The booster shots are essential for people with compromised immune systems and old people to gain longer-lasting immunity, Lan said, suggesting they should be injected on schedule and at the right dose.
The director also stressed the importance of vaccinating primary care workers as they belong to risk groups. The vaccine will help reduce the spread of the coronavirus in other people.
For his part, Associate Prof. dr. Tran Minh Dien, director of the National Pediatric Hospital, on concerns about the possibility of children being infected with subvariants of Omicron (BA.4 and BA.5).
“Studies have shown that between 20 and 25% of children are infected with the coronavirus. Most severe cases are primarily related to chronic or underlying diseases,” Dien said.
He stressed that if the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants spread rapidly in the community, there could be transmission from children to the elderly and adults because they do not follow Covid-19 prevention protocols as strictly as adults.
An effective disease monitoring system
In the past two years, the detection of new local infections of Covid-19 has proven the efficiency of Vietnam’s communicable disease surveillance system, which can help the Vietnamese government detect gene groups or new strains early, Dr. Socorro Escalante, acting chief representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Vietnam, said at the above-mentioned seminar.
With a good surveillance system, it should come as no surprise that more community transmission cases will be recorded in the near future, Socorro Escalante said.
She spoke highly of Vietnam’s coronavirus prevention and control system, which has rapidly quarantined, monitored and tracked confirmed cases, and suggested maintaining social distancing, public health measures and limiting mass gatherings for a long period of time.
The WHO representative added that the vaccine currently in use in Vietnam is also effective against strains of BA.4 and BA.5. That is why the Vietnamese government still recommends that people get booster vaccinations.
The measures Vietnam is taking are necessary to detect and confirm new Covid-19 cases, emphasized Socorro Escalante.
She noted that the strains, including both BA.4 and BA.5, have spread before. Experts aren’t sure if virulence is higher, but the vaccine currently in use is effective against both sub-variants.
Socorro Escalante also expressed confidence in Vietnam’s response plans in the event of widespread transfer, saying that the WHO will continue to stand side by side with the country to address the challenges posed by the pandemic.
