Flight NH833, operated by All Nippon Airways, landed in Ho Chi Minh City early Friday morning, carrying 400,000 AstraZeneca vaccine jabs donated to Vietnam by Japan.  

This batch of vaccine doses is among the one million COVID-19 vaccine shots that Japan pledged to gift to Vietnam in an announcement on June 25.

The second shipment, carrying the remaining 600,000 doses, is expected to arrive on July 8.

The Southeast Asian country received an initial donation of 966,320 jabs of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from Japan on June 17. 

The newly-arrived 400,000 doses are in temporary storage with Tan Son Nhat Cargo Services Joint Stock Company while they await customs clearance procedures before being sent to their final storage destination.

Vietnam has so far administered more than 3.81 million doses of the vaccine since inoculations began on March 8.

More than 204,000 people have finished their two-shot regimen.

The Vietnamese Ministry of Health said that Vietnam has received aid commitments and signed purchasing contracts for about 105 million COVID-19 vaccine doses so far, according to Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper.

The country is projected to receive about 30 million additional doses by the third quarter of this year.

The health ministry on Friday morning confirmed 151 new COVID-19 cases, including four imported and 147 domestic infections, taking the national caseload to 17,727 patients, with 7,247 recoveries and 81 deaths.

Since the eruption of the current virus wave on April 27, Vietnam has recorded 14,335 domestically-infected patients in 51 of its 63 provinces and cities.

Bac Giang is leading the table with 5,656 patients, followed by Ho Chi Minh City with 4,420 and Bac Ninh Province with 1,608.

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