Vietnam ask for emergency help 

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnam has been proud of successfully controlling the coronavirus. Even if the epidemic in neighboring countries spreads, the Vietnamese government still relies on strict quarantine measures, diligent contact tracing, and local lockdowns to control the virus. With the low vaccination rate and the new outbreak, Vietnam is now in the situation faced by many countries early last year.

Since the outbreak in January last year, Vietnam has recorded 49 deaths and only 7,781 cases in total, but nearly 60% of the infection cases occurred in the past month. The local government speculated that this wave started in several clusters at the end of April, including the epidemic in Ho Chi Minh City’s churches and factories in the north. Vietnam has recently discovered a new variant combining the British variant with the Indian variant, which has a stronger spread.

Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has regarded India as a mutation, these signs are showing that Vietnam’s luck may be running out. Ho Chi Minh City, the most populous city in Vietnam, has banned large gatherings. The city government has also stated that it plans to test the entire 9 million population of the city with a testing capacity of 100,000 samples per day.

The outside world views the outbreak in Vietnam and believes that there are several reasons, one of which is that the government has been successful in controlling the virus in the past, so the speed of obtaining vaccines is very slow.

Vietnam has received nearly 2.9 million doses of the new crown vaccine, most of which are AstraZeneca vaccines. According to the "New York Times" database, Vietnam has a population of about 97 million. So far, it has only injected more than 1 million doses of vaccine, and the percentage of complete vaccination is only 0.1%, which is one of the lowest rates in the world.

Until the outbreak of the epidemic, Vietnamese officials have redoubled their efforts to purchase vaccines in recent weeks, and even called on companies, organizations and the public to contribute ideas and funds to speed up the import of vaccines. According to British Sky News, the Vietnamese government has sent a large number of text messages to citizens requesting donations to a special fund of 777 million pounds needed for the vaccination program.

The current Vietnam vaccine plan includes 30 million doses ordered from Pfizer, which will be delivered before the end of this year. It is also negotiating with Moderna. At the same time, Vietnam also announced that Russia has agreed to provide 20 million doses of the "Satellite V" vaccine this year. Vietnam approved Russian vaccines in March this year, but did not increase procurement until the outbreak of the epidemic.

In addition, Vietnam will also produce vaccines locally. The research center under the Ministry of Health of Vietnam is negotiating with Russia for the local production of the "Satellite V" vaccine. A state-owned company called Vabiotech will begin packaging Russian vaccines in July, with a monthly production capacity of 5 million doses. Russia's "Satellite V" new crown vaccine has been approved in 66 countries, covering more than 3.2 billion people. According to the analysis of the data of 3.8 million Russian citizens who received the vaccine, the effectiveness of the vaccine was 97.6%, and the data published earlier by the medical journal Lancet was 91.6%.

The Vietnamese government's goal is to obtain 150 million doses of vaccine this year, in order to cover 75% of the 98 million population.