Army considers using helicopters for vaccine delivery
The Ministry of Defense and the Steering Committee for the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign held a briefing on August 10 to assess the progress of vaccination after a month of implementation.
Speaking at the event, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long, the Health Ministry’s functional agencies coordinated with the military units to install 8 vaccine storage facilities in Military Region 7 and the Hanoi Capital Military High Command, with a storage capacity of up to 60 million doses of vaccine.
In addition, the Ministry of Health also handed over 63 refrigerated trucks to military regions to transport vaccines to vaccination centers.
In the time to come, when Vietnam receive more vaccines, of which some need to be stored at extremely low temperatures, the health sector and the military as well as the Central agencies and local authorities should have close coordination and detailed plans.
According to Deputy Minister of National Defense Vu Hai San, the army has also mobilized forces, which are fully trained and ready to respond to any circumstances and at any time.
The army can send helicopters to transport vaccines to islands and remote regions. The Ministry of Defense will have a plan to deliver the vaccines to localities as soon as shipments of vaccines arrive in Vietnam.
According to the Vaccination Subcommittee, by August 10, Vietnam had received over 18 million doses of vaccine. Most of them have been given to frontline forces and people in pandemic-hit areas, including Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
Over the past 2 weeks, the vaccination has been accelerated, with an average of nearly 400,000 injections per day. The total number of injections has so far been more than 10.5 million.
Some 2.5 million doses of Moderna and 250,000 doses of Verocell are ready to be given to those who have already injected these types of the vaccines as their first jab.
Additionally, the Ministry of Health has issued a project on the distribution of vaccines until the end of 2021, based on which localities draw up their detailed plans for injections. The ministry also warns that localities should ensure vaccine supply for those who will get the second jab as scheduled.
According to Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung, over the past few months, some 2.4 million people have downloaded the electronic health declaration app while all centrally-run cities and provinces have digitalized medical data and information.
To date, 10.1 million people have registered to get vaccinated while information on 5,568 vaccination centers in all centrally-run cities and provinces has been posted to the app. The press actively participated in information dissemination on the vaccination drive.
