Vietnam aims to vaccinate all of its adult population with a coronavirus booster shot by the end of the first quarter of next year, the health ministry said on Friday.
The Southeast Asian country has seen a surge in daily infections since it lifted most of its movement restrictions in October, but has not reported any cases of the Omicron variant.
“The Covid-19 situation has been evolving in a complicated manner recently, with a rising trend in new infections,” the ministry said in a statement.
The country reported 16,377 infections on Thursday, raising its overall caseload to 1.6 million, with 30,500 deaths. More than 62% of its population of 98 million have received at least two vaccine shots.
Many Southeast Asian economies had been implementing reopening strategies prior to the emergence of the Omicron variant, driven by falling virus cases and accelerating vaccine rollouts.
This was led by Thailand’s easing of border restrictions in early November, followed by Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Now international travel remains subdued across Asia-Pacific as border restrictions are being reimposed amid the Omicron Covid-19 variant.
“APAC economies have been slower to ease cross-border travel restrictions than other regions, even before Omicron, due to local outbreaks and slow vaccination rollouts, especially in south Asia and ASEAN,” George Xu and Stephen Schwartz of Fitch Ratings noted in a report.
Tourist arrivals have been well below pre-pandemic levels across Asia-Pacific, with the exception of the Maldives, which was among the first economies to reopen to tourism.
“The Maldives saw visitor flows rebound, especially from India and Russia, which may partly reflect diversion from competing destinations with tighter border controls,” the Fitch analysts added.
- George Russell, with Reuters
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