HANOI(Reuters) -Vietnam’s COVID-19 vaccination drive has been too slow in many areas, state media cited the health minister as saying on Tuesday, as the Southeast Asian nation battled its worst coronavirus outbreak yet. Vietnam successfully contained the coronavirus for most of last year, but a Delta-driven outbreak that has infected more than 165,000 people since late April has increased pressure on authorities for a faster vaccination rollout. “Vaccination is now a priority and urgent task for localities,” Nguyen Thanh Long was quoted as saying by the Vietnam News Agency. Data from the health ministry showed Vietnam has only fully vaccinated 700,000 people, or less than 1% of the country’s 98 million people, since it launched a rollout in early March. Seven million vaccine doses have been administered, however, though this only accounted for 42.5% of the vaccine received so far, the data showed.

Source: MetroXpress August 03, 2021 11:00 UTC