An additional donation of 1,499,940 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from the U.S. to Vietnam arrived in Hanoi on Saturday evening.

These doses were delivered through COVAX Facility and came directly from the Pfizer manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam said in a press release the same day.  

This delivery follows three previous donations totaling six million vaccine doses that the U.S. already supplied to Vietnam through the COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme.

Apart from the 7.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in total, the U.S. has committed more than US$26.7 million in related assistance to Vietnam since the start of the pandemic, according to the embassy.

With an aim to strengthen Vietnam’s capacity to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington and Hanoi continue to build on their longstanding cooperation with more than $1 billion U.S. investment in the Southeast Asian country’s health infrastructure.

To date, the U.S. has offered more than 160 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to over 100 countries worldwide, the embassy said.

As the largest single country contributor to COVAX, the U.S. government has contributed $4 billion to support the facility’s procurement and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to 92 low- and middle-income economies, including Vietnam.

The COVAX Facility is co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI), GAVI - the Vaccine Alliance, World Health Organization (WHO), and UNICEF as key delivery partners.

Vietnam has received COVID-19 vaccine donations from many other countries, including Japan, Australia, the UK, France, Italy, Russia, the Czech Republic, and China, among others.

The nation aims to secure 150 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to cover two-thirds of its 98-million population, and it has so far got about 60 million jabs from different sources, including COVAX, contractual purchases, and donations.

Vietnam’s Nano Covax vaccine candidate is undergoing the procedures to be authorized for emergency use as the first Vietnamese COVID-19 vaccine, having gone through successful trials.

By Saturday evening, the country had administered 43.65 million coronavirus vaccine doses to people nationwide, including 33.53 million first shots and 10.12 million second jabs, the Ministry of Health reported.

Since the pandemic erupted in Vietnam in early 2020, the Southeast Asian country has documented 803,202 COVID-19 cases, including 664,938 recoveries and 19,601 deaths.

Except Cao Bang, the coronavirus has spread to 62 out of the country’s 53 cities and provinces, with Ho Chi Minh City suffering the most with 392,155 cases and 15,069 fatalities.

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