The United States sent on Tuesday another batch of 1.6 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Vietnam, raising the total donation to the Southeast Asian country to over 26 million shots.

“I am very pleased to announce that the United States has delivered 1.6 million more doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Ho Chi Minh City today,” the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi quoted U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper as saying on its Facebook page on Tuesday.

“The United States has provided over 26 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam through the COVAX Program.

“We are proud to partner with Vietnam in the fight against COVID-19 and in building back better as we work toward recovery together.”

Last September, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that his country would donate more than one billion doses of vaccines to other nations in an effort to save lives and put an end to the pandemic.

In addition to support from other countries, Vietnam has also signed contracts with pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, to ensure sufficient resources for its vaccination campaigns.

Pfizer has finished the supply of 51 million vaccine shots to Vietnam and is expected to deliver 22 million jabs for children aged five to 11 in the near future.

As of Tuesday, over 178 million doses have been administered to the adult demographic of the country’s 98 million people, according to the Ministry of Health.

Nearly 16.8 million shots have been injected into children aged 12-17.

Vietnam has documented 3,557,629 COVID-19 cases and 40,338 pathogen-related deaths since the pandemic first hit the country in early 2020.

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