Vietnam secures 30 million doses of Swedish-British AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines

View of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine boxes at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, Britain January 2, 2021. Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/Pool via REUTERS

Vietnam has signed an agreement to secure the purchase of 30 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine produced by AstraZeneca Plc, British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company, the government said on 4 January. Vietnam is looking to purchase more Covid-19 vaccines from other companies like Pfizer as well.

Truong Quoc Cuong, Vietnam’s deputy health minister said, “We’ve signed an agreement to secure AstraZeneca’s vaccine for 15 million citizens equal 30 Million doses.” According to the Vice Minster, Vietnam is also looking at buying more vaccines from Pfizer Inc, Sputnik V from Russia and China.

Previously Vietnam had looked into the Russian variant of the vaccine but based on the high costs the government issued a statement stating that they were “in no hurry to sign agreement”. Vietnam has handled its domestic Covid-19 spread well with only 1,494 registered cases and 35 deaths in the country.

The Covid-19 vaccine produced by AstraZeneca and Oxford University is the cheapest variant amongst other brands available and the fact that it can be stored at refrigerator temperature makes it very suitable for all Asian countries.

Truong Quoc Cuong added that Vietnam also has quota from WHO’s COVAX programme to purchase more vaccines to cover 16% or 15.6 million people of its almost 98 million population.

Source: yahoonews

About Zazithorn Ruengchinda

ScandAsia Journalist • Scandinavian Publishing Co., Ltd. • Bangkok Thailand

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