Buying COVID-19 vaccines is a necessary and urgent task that must be carried out immediately, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh told permanent Government members who met on May 17 to discuss the purchase of Pfizer vaccine.

A medical worker handles a dose of the AstraZeneca vacine (Photo: VNA)

Reporting the Ministry of Health (MoH)’s plan to buy the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said the Vietnamese side must reply to the company on May 18 at the latest.

PM Chinh said procuring COVID-19 vaccines is necessary and urgent as stated by the Politburo and the Party Central Committee’s Secretariat in Official Dispatch No. 50-CV/TW, dated February 19, and the Government in Resolution No. 21/NQ-CP, issued on February 26.

In the spirit of “combating the pandemic is like combating the enemy” and facing the global shortage of COVID-19 vaccines, he requested the MoH and other ministries and sectors to uphold their sense of responsibility to carry out measures to obtain vaccines as soon as possible.

As this is an emergency situation, the vaccine procurement must be handled in line with legal regulations on special and urgent circumstances and conducted immediately, the Government leader added.

As of 6am on May 18, Viet Nam had recorded 4,378 cases of COVID-19, with 2,668 recoveries and 37 deaths. They include 2,909 domestically-transmitted infections and 1,469 imported ones. As many as 1,339 new local infections were detected since the latest outbreak hit the country on April 27.