Vietnam’s Ministry of Health issued a regulation in recent days requiring citizens who refuse to receive a Chinese coronavirus booster shot to “write a letter of accountability” if they later contract the disease and spread it to others, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported Tuesday, noting that some observers doubt the edict’s legality.
“The Ministry of Health issued the regulation, which states that people who do not want a fourth shot need to agree to take responsibility if they later get infected and spread the virus. Many people who spoke to RFA said the ruling had no legal basis,” the U.S. government-funded broadcaster reported June 28. The communist government has not clarified at press time what it means by “take responsibility.”
“A representative of Ho Chi Minh City’s Center for Disease Control explained to the Thanh Nien newspaper that the request is in line with the Ministry of Health’s assessment of the risks but, so far, the ministry has not explained how people should take responsibility,” RFA relayed.
“People who do not agree to get the second boosters will be required to sign a written commitment and take responsibility for their decision if the virus rages again,” Tuoi Tre online newspaper paraphrased Vietnam’s health ministry as saying on June 26, without elaboration.
Vietnam’s government is riling up citizens with a ruling that people who refuse a COVID vaccine booster need to write a letter of accountability, with the decree receiving either a negative response or ‘no comment’ from people contacted by RFA.https://t.co/hHhuNP1y4z
— Radio Free Asia (@RadioFreeAsia) June 28, 2022
The newspaper was reporting on the ministry’s planned efforts to promote booster shot uptake in Ho Chi Min City in the coming days. Vietnam’s government has so far failed to define what it means when stating citizens “should take responsibility” for declining a Chinese coronavirus booster shot. Some observers have speculated that the government may withhold medical treatment from such citizens in the event that they require it to combat a future coronavirus infection, though this has yet to be confirmed.
A poster in the style of Vietnamese communist propaganda art warns against the spread of coronavirus in Hanoi. (AFP Manan VATSYAYANA)
A “booster shot” is an additional dose of a vaccine that a person receives after having already completed a full series of an inoculation.
The Vietnamese online newspaper Tuoi Tre interviewed a ward leader in Ho Chi Minh City on June 27 who said that “most people supported the first two injections and one booster shot [of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine], but only a few people supported the fourth shot,” RFA relayed on Tuesday.
A health worker disinfects arriving Vietnamese coronavirus patients at the national hospital of tropical diseases in Hanoi, Vietnam on Wednesday, July 29, 2020. (Bui Cuong Quyet/VNA via AP)
The ward leader’s assessment of Vietnamese public sentiment seems supported by a statement published by Vietnam’s Health Ministry on May 17, which acknowledged that “vaccination speed was slowing down as both citizens and officials were neglecting the threat of Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus], making it much harder to persuade people to get vaccinated with the third shot.”
Vietnam’s Health Ministry issued the statement to localities nationwide as part of a campaign to encourage the widespread vaccination of children against the Chinese coronavirus.
“Vaccination should happen at a faster pace so that children aged 5-11 are inoculated in the second quarter,” the health ministry said in the notice, as quoted by the Vietnamese news website VnExpress on May 18.
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