A ninth grader in Hanoi died on Sunday morning, one day after she had gotten vaccinated against COVID-19 with a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The student’s death was confirmed on the evening of the same day by Nguyen Viet Binh, chairman of Nhi Khe Commune in Thuong Tin District, where the deceased girl lived.

“She got injected as scheduled at 8:14 am on Saturday under the correct procedure,” Binh said.

“[On Sunday morning], as she showed signs of a fever, her family took her to Thuong Tin General Hospital, then she was transferred to Bach Mai Hospital.

“She passed away at 10:00 am [the same] morning.”

Binh added that officials visited to pay condolences to the student’s family on Sunday afternoon while functional forces have launched an investigation into the cause of her death.

Duong Thi Hong, head of the office of the National Expanded Vaccination Program, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that an expertise meeting will be convened in Hanoi on Monday to discuss the case.

Hanoi authorities started inoculating 14-year-old children, or ninth graders like the girl in Nhi Khe, against COVID-19 on Saturday, with 38,233 doses having been given so far.

On the same day, the city gave 11,466 injections to children aged 15 to 17. 

Between November 23 and 5:30 pm on Saturday, health workers across the city administered 277,747 shots of COVID-19 vaccine to students in grades ten, eleven, and twelve.

According to the city’s plan, it will administer the COVID-19 vaccine to all children between 12 and 17 years old in the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.

It is expected that 791,921 children will be vaccinated, including 519,547 kids from 12 to 15 years old and 272,374 aged 16 to 18.

Previously, Khong Minh Tuan, deputy director of the Hanoi Center for Disease Control, told reporters that the vaccine used in the aforementioned children age group is the COVID-19 Comirnaty vaccine, better known as Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, with the same indication for injections as for adults.

Hanoi has recorded more than 9,600 local COVID-19 infections since the fourth wave hit Vietnam on April 27.

Nearly 6.5 million adults out of eight million people of the capital city have received at least one vaccine shot, with more than 5.5 million of them fully vaccinated, according to the national COVID-19 vaccination portal.

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