Authorities in many localities of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region have stepped up preparations for the inoculation of additional and booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines to local people to avert possible complications of the coronavirus pandemic.

An Giang Province has prepared plans to give additional primary shots and booster jabs to local people and will begin the vaccination campaign next week, Tran Quang Hien, director of the provincial Department of Health, said on Friday.

The province has sought an allocation of 1.4 million more vaccine doses from the Health Ministry to carry out the campaign, according to Hien.

Among the adults eligible for the shots, about 500,000 people with underlying diseases or immunocompromised conditions will be given priority.

The remaining subjects will receive injections in January 2022.

The campaign is expected to reach completion at the beginning of February 2022.

For younger vaccine recipients, the province plans to finish inoculating about 49,000 children from 12 to 17 years old, who have not been fully vaccinated, by the end of this week.

Health workers in An Giang have so far administered the first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines to 102.54 percent and 56.47 percent of the 12-17 age group, respectively. 

The corresponding figures for people from 18 years old are 97.94 percent and 95.38 percent.

A health worker administers a dose of COVID-19 vaccine to a woman in An Giang Province, Vietnam. Photo: Buu Dau / Tuoi Tre

In Vinh Long, the provincial Department of Health reported that 31,368 adults, or over four percent of the province’s population of about 1.1 million, have received the third doses after ten days of its inoculation drive.

The province intends to give the third doses to 782,000 eligible adults within this month, with the priority given to the same people as An Giang.

Up to date, the number of people who received the first injection has accounted for 99.7 percent of the population, and the two-dose recipients have made up 96.6 percent. 

The respective ratios in children from 12 to 17 years old are 99.12 percent and 93.36 percent, respectively.

In Soc Trang, health workers have been administering additional primary shots to frontline forces and people with immunocompromised conditions since the beginning of this month, according to Tran Van Dung, deputy director of the provincial health department.

In the same move, Ca Mau has proposed the Ministry of Health provide 65,000 additional doses of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to faciliate the administration of additional and booster doses this month, according to provincial chairman Huynh Quoc Viet.

The number of newly-detected COVID-19 cases in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region has continued to increase over the past days, notably with Ca Mau, Ben Tre, and Vinh Long reporting an average infection rate of 500 daily new cases per 100,000 population in the past seven days.

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