Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has urged the Ministry of Health to study the vaccination against Covid-19 for children aged between three and five.
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The Government leader's request was detailed in a dispatch issued on March 19 by the Government Office regarding the purchase and infection of vaccines and the promotion of domestic vaccine production.
Earlier this month, the Ministry of Health has also officially approved giving the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine to children aged between 5-11.
According to a decision issued by the ministry on March 1, children aged between 5 and 11 in Vietnam will be administered with Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine with a dosage of 0.2ml.
Those aged from 12 will receive 0.3ml of Pfizer each dose.
The government has recently agreed to purchase 21.9 million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5-11.
A survey from the ministry indicated that about 50 percent of parents in the country agreed to let their children in the 5-11 age group receive the vaccines.
There is also no information yet available on the rollout plan of the vaccines, but it has been suggested that children in this age group would only be recommended to get the shots, no mandate will be enforced.
Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long last month told local media that administration to this age group would be more difficult than the rollout for adults and teenagers aged 12-17 that the country had been doing, and it has accepted the likelihood that there will be some amount of doses going unused.
Vietnam has so far administered 194.97 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines including 16.25 million doses of Pfizer vaccines given to children aged 12-17 years.
Pfizer shots so far are the only to have been recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for use in children this young, with a lower dosage compared to the adult shots.
