Speeding up research on and production of COVID-19 vaccines

ABO/NDO - Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan suggested research groups, manufacturers and related units accelerate the production of domestically developed COVID-19 vaccines and vaccines using technology transfer from abroad.

He made the request at a virtual meeting on the research, production and clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines held on September 10.

Deputy Minister Tran Van Thuan, also head of the Special Working Group on clinical trial research and development of COVID-19 vaccines, said that the research, development and production of vaccines in Vietnam have shown many encouraging signals.

Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan speaking at the meeting.

Regarding the home-grown Nano Covax vaccine, Thuan asked the research team and the manufacturer to urgently submit the additional documents to the National Ethics Council and Advisory Council for the Registration of Circulation of Drugs and Medicinal Ingredients for considering the issuance of a registration certificate for the conditional circulation of the vaccine.

The Deputy Minister requested the submission of this additional dossier should be done before September 15.

Regarding the Covivac and ARCT-154 vaccines being tested in some localities, the Deputy Minister suggested that research groups develop specific plans to expand the screening of volunteers and shorten unnecessary processes to speed up the research on these two vaccines.

The Deputy Minister also asked for the shortening of related procedures to produce vaccines with technology transferred from Russia, Cuba and Spain.

Vietnam expects to put into use home-grown vaccines and vaccines with technology transferred by the end of 2021or early 2022.

* On September 10, the Ministry of Health decided to allocate 156,168 vials (equivalent to 1,446 boxes) of Remdesivir to serve in the treatment of COVID-19 patients, the largest distribution of the drug so far.

In this sixth round of drug allocation, 46 medical facilities in provinces and cities with COVID-19 outbreaks received the drug, the largest of which being nearly 40,000 vials allocated to Ho Chi Minh City.

(Source: NDO)