Heath authorities on Saturday began administering Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine shots to local residents at several vaccination sites in Thu Duc City under Ho Chi Minh City.

Sputnik V is the fifth COVID-19 vaccine that Ho Chi Minh City has provided for its citizens, besides AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna.

The shots were offered at three inoculation sites at Region 2 Medical Center, Thu Duc Agricultural Wholesale Market, and P&T General Hospital.

The Sputnik V shots were supplied by a local business, according to the Thu Duc City Medical Center.

As residents signed up for the jabs on a voluntary basis, the number of recipients was quite limited.

People were only required to present their IDs and certificates of their first shots, if any, when coming to the vaccination sites.

Sputnik V is produced by Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology and has been approved for use in 70 countries and territories.

The vaccine was authorized for emergency use by the Vietnamese Ministry of Health on March 23.

It is a two-dose vaccine with a recommended interval of three weeks.

Results of clinical trials showed that the jab is up to 91.6 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19.

Ho Chi Minh City has been the hardest-hit locality since the fourth outbreak began on April 27, with over 416,600 local infections and 16,000 deaths.

The city of nine million people had administered more than 12.5 million vaccine doses as of Saturday, with over 5.4 million citizens fully vaccinated.

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