Administering the Covid-19 vaccine to employees at Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone (Ho Chi Minh City).Moving forward, as more sources of Covid-19 vaccines become available, Vietnam is implementing a vaccination strategy oriented towards maximizing vaccine accessibility. This approach aims to intelligently build herd immunity to revive the economy and ensure the right to vaccine equity.
During the Covid-19 vaccination campaign from now until the end of 2021 and early 2022, Vietnam must prepare for various scenarios as supply remains dependent on partners. There will be times when vaccine shipments arrive in large waves, requiring rapid, large-scale administration, while at other times, shipments may arrive slowly and lag behind schedules. Therefore, robust tools are needed to optimize the campaign.
Furthermore, there are multiple types of vaccines catering to different target groups. Vaccines are specialized pharmaceuticals requiring unique storage, distribution, and administration protocols. While setting up vaccination sites immediately is not difficult, monitoring and managing adverse events following immunization (AEFI) while ensuring vaccination safety must be handled by well-trained personnel, which cannot be scaled up instantly in massive numbers.
Practical deployment of vaccination in Vietnam demonstrates that vaccine efficacy is extremely high, achieving over 90% effectiveness in preventing severe illness and hospitalization. Currently, no fully vaccinated individuals in Vietnam have developed severe illness, though no vaccine guarantees absolute protection against infection.
This point remains a subject of community debate due to widespread concerns: Can fully vaccinated individuals who do not fall ill become silent carriers transmitting the virus to others? Rare cases in Vietnam have highlighted this issue, but fundamentally, vaccines have proven their protective value in preventing severe disease and limiting secondary transmission. This serves as the foundation for future reopening once the community achieves high vaccination coverage.
Vietnam remains steadfast in pursuing its dual goal of combating the pandemic while ensuring economic development. To make this feasible, the "weapon" of vaccination is indispensable, particularly to protect vulnerable populations, workers, and the impoverished while social security resources remain limited.
In epidemic prevention and control, we apply the "four on-the-spot" principles: forces, command, vehicles, and logistics. These four principles must continue to be applied in the Covid-19 vaccination campaign. Backed by experience and a vaccination system established and refined over the past 30 years—involving hundreds of thousands of medical personnel across 18,000 vaccination sites, alongside the private immunization network—up to 3.6 million doses can be administered daily. Consequently, speed is not the primary challenge for the upcoming campaign implementation.
When deploying the campaign, the utmost priority is to optimize the protective efficacy of vaccines. Vaccines must be deployed as rapidly as possible through both public and private channels using diverse delivery models, such as stationary and mobile sites. However, ensuring vaccination safety and streamlining population sorting present complex challenges for professional and managerial agencies.
It is imperative to promptly adopt criteria for safe vaccination sites as well as a high-level professional emergency response network extending down to district levels, supported by ambulances dedicated to new immunization clusters, enabling vaccination rollout down to communal levels in remote and isolated areas. Additionally, the application of telemedicine should be enhanced to support remote emergency care.
Priority should be given to vaccinating populations at high risk of infection or transmission. These are occupational groups characterized by frequent public contact, rendering them susceptible to infection and potentially dangerous sources of transmission. Routine testing is not a fundamental solution; instead, they must be provided with sufficient immunity to resist the virus, thereby forming a shield for the community. Areas experiencing active outbreaks are also priority targets for vaccination.
Nevertheless, a smart strategy involves cordon-nutritional vaccination around active outbreak areas rather than vaccinating directly within raging epicentres, because vaccines lack therapeutic properties. If an individual is already infected, vaccination cannot halt the disease. Moreover, gathering at vaccination sites within active outbreak zones poses an inherent transmission risk.
Therefore, it is optimal to effectively segment and categorize risk clusters down to the smallest scale, maintaining conventional anti-epidemic measures within these risk clusters until the outbreak subsides before organizing vaccination at these hotspots. Consequently, defining high-risk zones, buffer zones, and safe zones is critical prior to formulating vaccination plans in epidemic areas.
Simultaneously, priority must be given to populations vulnerable to mortality and severe progression if infected with Covid-19. Furthermore, essential workers, primary breadwinners, and demographic groups or sectors with significant economic contributions must be prioritized to mitigate epidemic risks within factories and prevent disruptions to production chains. Factories will only be safe when all workers are vaccinated and individuals arriving from at-risk communities are strictly managed.
With current efforts, Vietnam’s Covid-19 vaccination strategy will progressively secure dosage quantities and adhere to schedules. However, flexibility is required to make timely evidence-based adjustments—such as stratifying population groups and clusters, or utilizing heterologous prime-boost vaccination schedules—to guarantee timelines and maximize coverage.
Systemic bottlenecks experienced recently must be rectified promptly alongside stronger commitments from local authorities regarding implementation. A comprehensive master plan for vaccination must be established so that upon the arrival of each vaccine batch, administration can proceed seamlessly without the need to recreate plans.
Currently, the cold chain system for the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) is aged, with numerous refrigerators in service for over a decade. Many provinces retain a psychological reliance on national program provisions, leading to proactive deficiencies in vaccine storage systems. This can directly impact vaccination progress when shipments delivered to provinces also include vaccines designated for routine immunization.
However, an excessive focus on Covid-19 vaccines must not overshadow routine immunization activities vital for safeguarding children against other dangerous pathologies. Lacking vaccines for other severe diseases would precipitate a twin-demic, culminating in healthcare system disruption.
Ultimately, for the vaccination campaign to succeed, public consensus and support represent the prerequisite condition. Aside from persistently adhering to the 5K measures, providing accurate information regarding health status and vaccination target categories enables competent authorities to accurately calculate and plan for the campaign. When called for vaccination, adhering strictly to infection prevention safety requirements and carrying out health monitoring at home per official guidelines constitute vital contributions to the overarching success of the largest vaccination campaign in history.
PhD. MD. PHAM QUANG THAI
National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology
Source: https://nhandan.vn/tin-tuc-xa-hoi/chien-luoc-phu-hop-cho-chien-dich-tiem-chung-lon-nhat-trong-lich-su-655127/?fbclid=IwAR3ez_3MGzhsDj56jajNaBDsWY2cLlaRaGy_8V1bjf-SskJT107gRZ0MO58