Ministry proposes acceptance of kids’ Covid vaccine from Australia

In a report submitted Saturday to Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, the ministry said the Australian Embassy in Hanoi has offered to aid Vietnam with 13.7 million Pfizer and Moderna vaccine doses for children.

The doses will come in two batches of 9.7 million and 4 million doses that can be delivered in April.

Administration of the doses can begin in April itself, the ministry said, adding that it would continue to seek more vaccine doses from multiple sources.

The ministry is yet to explain why it has proposed accepting the Moderna vaccine that has not yet been approved for. In its report, the ministry said “the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the Canadian and Australian health ministries recommend using the Spikevax vaccine (Moderna) to inoculate children aged 6-11”.

It said that it has received documents from Zullig Pharma Vietnam, which imports the Moderna vaccine into the country, regarding vaccination recommendations for children aged 6-11.

The Moderna vaccine is undergoing trials on children and has not been approved yet by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Moderna has said that two doses of its vaccine are 44 percent effective against the Omicron variant for children aged between six months and two years old, and 38 effective for children aged 2-5.

Vietnam has received over 227 million vaccine doses and administered over 205 million shots. Over 99 percent of adults and 94 percent of children aged 12-17 have received two vaccine shots.