Nitin Kapoor, chairman and general director of AstraZeneca Vietnam, said the 288,000 doses are the second batch under a contract for 30 million the Ministry of Health and the Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC) have struck with his company, he said.

With two other batches through global vaccine access mechanism Covax, Vietnam has so far received around 2.9 million doses of the British-Swedish vaccine.

It began a public vaccination program in March, prioritizing frontline workers against Covid like doctors, nurses, soldiers, and police officers to begin with.

Over a million shots have been given, including two to over 28,800 people.

The ministry is looking for ways to secure more vaccines, including those made by Pfizer-BioNTech.

Indigenous vaccines are also being developed, with human trials under way for Nanocovax by Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC and Covivac by the Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals.

Nanocovax is expected to begin the third phase of trials next week on 13,000 volunteers, and, if everything goes well, could enter production as early as September.

The country is looking to secure 150 million doses in all this year to immunize 70 percent of its population.

Anh Thu