FV Hospital is seeking permission to both ramp up its vaccination facilities, and begin charging for vaccination services.

According to a press release from the hospital, earlier this week the Minister of Health, the municipal People's Committee and health department, and leaders of five private hospitals met to discuss the ongoing vaccination drive.

At the meeting, Phạm Thị Thanh Mai, FV's COO, shared that the hospital is currently working to vaccinate roughly 5,000 French nationals and their relatives in the region, while also participating in the public vaccination campaign.

However, the facility wishes to expand its capacity, as it currently has a cold storage system that can store 800,000 AstraZeneca doses, 200,000 Moderna doses and 600,000 Pfizer doses at the same time.

At the moment, FV's vaccination team consists of one doctor, three nurses and administrative staff, and can administer up to 800 doses per day. Mai proposed expanding this to over 100 nurses, which would allow 10,000 people to be vaccinated on a daily basis at FV.

She asked for the government agencies at the meeting to grant approval for the hospital to dramatically increase its involvement in vaccinations.

At the same time, Mai also proposed that FV be allowed to collect fees for vaccination services since it is a private hospital that must use its own budget to purchase equipment and pay extra staff, while also suspending some services in order to focus on vaccinations.

Furthermore, she suggested that FV could also source and import more vaccine doses, contributing to the city's much-needed supply of doses.

After taking a long time to get off the ground, vaccinations have sped up substantially in recent days, particularly in Saigon. According to VnExpress, 1.6 million residents have received one shot, while 770,600 are fully vaccinated. The city has been battling a massive COVID-19 outbreak for weeks, though daily case numbers are finally starting to fall.

[Photo via AW2]