Vaccine strategy determines economic recovery

Vietnam is entering its largest vaccination campaign in history with 150 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to be administered to 70% of the population, aiming to achieve herd immunity by the end of 2021 or early 2022.

This campaign will also face many difficulties, including access to the vaccine, the purchase and distribution of the vaccine to people on a large scale and more importantly, the materialisation of a long-term vaccine strategy for the future.

Identifying vaccine and economic problems

In a meeting with Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Tran Quoc Phuong, a representative from the World Bank (WB) recommended that, besides efforts to promote growth drivers, vaccination is one of the most urgent responses needed in Vietnam, and the country should attempt to arrange capital to quickly buy vaccines for its people.

Recently, the State has allowed enterprises and organisations to buy and import vaccines while announcing which types of vaccines they can import into Vietnam and assigning the Ministry of Health to provide consultancy and help enterprises during the process.

To implement the vaccine strategy, the Government requires the acceleration of vaccine purchase as soon as possible. In particular, it is important to ensure coordination between the relevant agencies for the smooth implementation of licensing, management, and the quality of vaccines and to prevent competition between private and State agencies.

In fact, people and businesses are willing to join hands with the Government to buy enough vaccines for all the people as demonstrated through the contributions to the COVID-19 Vaccine Fund.

However, it is difficult to buy vaccines in large quantities. Many experts recommend that amid the shortages in the global supply of vaccines and the competition in buying them, Vietnam needs to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to buy at market prices.

Besides the AstraZeneca vaccine, it is necessary to expand negotiations with Pfizer, Moderna and others while taking advantage of relations with other countries to find vaccines they have yet to use.

Experts have made major recommendations that Vietnam should send a message that it has the financial resources and is willing to buy vaccines at market prices. This is a lesson learned from countries that have successfully conducted vaccination on a large scale by allowing organisations and businesses to buy vaccines, the State having a mechanism to monitor and manage risk to avoid buying fake, poor quality or expired vaccines.

According to economic experts, with the first priority given to ensuring people's health, the key to Vietnam's economic growth will come from the prevention of the spread of the pandemic and speeding up vaccination. The government is taking drastic measures to accomplish this.

Before the fourth outbreak of the pandemic, the GDP growth target for the whole year at 6.5% was already a high target with many challenges. With a GDP growth rate of 4.48% in the first quarter, the GDP growth must reach 7.11% in the second quarter and 6.73% and 7.04% in the third and fourth quarters respectively. However, the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on industrial production since the end of April have made the second quarter's growth rate lower than the set target.

Internal strength is decisive

Dr. Nguyen Duc Kien, head of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Group said that strong vaccine competition on a global scale has made the COVID-19 vaccine a political issue, not just an economic one.

“If we wish the vaccine not to become a political story, we must return to the Party's orientation 15 years ago which stated that external forces are important, but internal forces are decisive. It means we must promote our own vaccine production capacity as aligned with negotiating to buy vaccines and reopening the economy. A lot of analysis around the world predicts that the COVID-19 vaccine will not give immunity for life, but instead will need to be repeated every year. Therefore, if we cannot produce vaccines and have to buy them or rely on aid, the country's pandemic prevention and control results will be affected. It is necessary to speed up the research and production of homegrown vaccines to meet the urgent requirements of both pandemic control and economic recovery and development,” said Dr. Nguyen Duc Kien.

The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Group has issued a report to the Government on its international experience in applying a wartime production law in relation to the production and supply of vaccines. The report stated that countries such as Russia and the US have all applied wartime laws to produce their COVID-19 vaccines.

Specifically, the wartime law on vaccine production signed by former US President Donald Trump in April 2020 has two important points. The first is that all vaccine manufacturers must stop other production activities to focus on manufacturing according to the orders of government and they will be shut down if they do not follow the law. The second is that pharmaceutical companies are allowed to only carry out trials until the second stage and then they can bring products to market, meaning that the law allows the distribution of the vaccines in parallel with research.

The COVID-19 vaccine policy has been implemented by countries around the world under this state of emergency to give stronger authority to the heads of law enforcement agencies to decide on the urgent policies needed to meet the real requirements of pandemic prevention.

In Vietnam, pandemic prevention and control has seen certain successes. However, to meet the new deadlines, it is necessary to promote a vaccine research and production strategy through a large public investment programme with the participation of the private sector.