The Vietnamese health ministry reported on Wednesday that U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer would be providing 20 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to the Southeast Asian country. The vaccines, co-developed by German biotech company BioNTech, are expected to be administered to 12 to 18-year-olds as part of the next stage of Vietnam’s national vaccine rollout campaign.
In addition to the recent order placement, Vietnam is also exploring the possibility of establishing a Pfizer plant in the country in order to facilitate vaccine production. Alternatively, the Vietnamese government is also considering a vaccine technology transfer with the pharmaceutical giant.
While Vietnam was originally among those countries that largely contained the virus at its onset, the far east Asian nation has struggled since experiencing a mass outbreak in late April. With daily infection levels reaching record numbers since then, the government has been working to accelerate its nationwide inoculation efforts.
Currently, fewer than 300,000 Vietnamese citizens have been fully inoculated. In addition to a prior order of 97,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA shot, Vietnam has primarily been administering AstraZeneca’s viral vector vaccine. Vietnam’s government has confirmed that those who have received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be eligible to receive a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine 8-12 weeks following their first vaccination.
