On behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper presented 34 more ultra-cold freezers for storage of COVID-19 vaccines to the Vietnamese Ministry of Health on Friday in Ho Chi Minh City.

The handover ceremony was held at the Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute on the same day.

The institute will keep six of the donated freezers and the rest will go to Military Hospital 175, Cho Ray Hospital and the Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) in 20 localities in southern Vietnam.

Each freezer can store up to 175,500 vaccine doses at the storage temperatures ranging from minus 80 to minus 20 degrees Celsius.

“I was honored to hand over 34 ultra-low temperature freezers from the people of the United States to the people of Vietnam at the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City today. These freezers will strengthen Vietnam’s capacity to manage COVID-19,” Ambassador Knapper said at the ceremony.

The handover of these freezers reflects the spirit of support and cooperation that has animated the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral partnership over the last 26 years, the ambassador said. 

With these medical freezers, the Vietnamese government will be able to store and distribute mRNA vaccines in a timely manner in the future, improving its capacity in the fight against COVID-19.

“It is my sincere belief that, working together, we can overcome the difficulties imposed by the pandemic and improve the lives and livelihoods of Vietnamese people across the country,” the diplomat added.

Director of the municipal Pasteur Institute Nguyen Vu Trung thanked the U.S. government for its support and highlighted the importance of such ultra-low freezers in vaccine storage and distribution.

The gift was among the 111 ultra-low temperature, medical-grade storage units that the U.S. Department of Defense had pledged to provide to Vietnam with a total value of approximately $1 million.

Seventy-seven of these freezers were handed to the health ministry’s National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi on October 12 last year.

Besides donating such freezers, the U.S. has also been the largest donor of COVID-19 vaccines to Vietnam since the pandemic hit the country since early 2020.

With the latest shipment of 1,661,400 Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine doses arriving in Ho Chi Minh City on March 1, the U.S. has given a total of more than 26 million vaccine shots to Vietnam.

The country has so far received more than 218 million vaccine doses from different sources and have administered 196.3 million vaccine shots to people nationwide since vaccination was rolled out in March 2020.

Currently, 100 percent of the adult population of the Southeast Asian nation have received their first COVID-19 vaccine doses, while 62 among the country’s 63 cities and provinces have reached a second jab coverage rate of more than 90 percent, the ministry’s data shows.

Meanwhile, 54 out of these 63 localities have reported a second dose coverage rate of over 90 percent for children aged 12 to 17.

Vietnam has so far documented 2,141,422 COVID-19 cases, with 1,804,849 recoveries and 36,719 mortalities, the ministry said.

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