Children aged 12 to 17 in Ho Chi Minh City are expected to be immunized against COVID-19 from next Friday, local health authorities announced earlier this week.
Around 780,000 children in the age group will be given the first vaccine shot for five days from October 22, the municipal Department of Health said in its draft vaccination plan submitted to the city’s Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on Friday.
Under the Ministry of Health’s guidance, children at such ages must be inoculated with the vaccines approved by the ministry, which has yet to specify the brands.
The vaccination is required to be provided to children at 16 to 17 years old first and then to those at lower ages at schools and fixed or mobile inoculation points.
Before immunization, children will undergo screening and their parents or custodians will be given necessary consultancy before signing vaccination consent forms.
The minors will be monitored for at least 30 minutes before obtaining vaccination certificates.
After a required interval from the first shot, they will receive their second jab of the same vaccine.
The city’s COVID-19 Information Portal on Saturday afternoon reported that local children under 18 years old accounted for 5.16 percent of its 412,400 infections, recorded since the pandemic hit Vietnam in early 2020.
Nationwide, 860,860 cases have been documented, including 790,504 recoveries and 21,131 deaths, the health ministry said on Saturday.
Recently, Vietnam’s daily new infections and deaths have sharply fallen, to 3,211 and 88 on Saturday from 10,482 and 250 a month earlier.
Ho Chi Minh City saw its daily new cases and fatalities drop to 790 and 58 on Saturday compared to 5,735 and 160 a month back, according to the ministry’s data.
The city of nine million people had administered more than 12.5 million vaccine doses as of Saturday, with over 5.4 million adult citizens fully vaccinated, according to official figures.
Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!