Vietnam Forcing People Who Refuse 4th Coronavirus Shot to Sign Humiliating Statement of 'Responsibility'

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.

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 “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.

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.

“So far, 59 percent of the population have received their third Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] vaccine shots, while just 18 percent of children aged 5-11 have received their shots,” Vietnamese Deputy Health Minister Do Xuan Tuyen said a week prior to the statement’s release.

VnExpress interviewed two Vietnamese citizens on May 18 who both said they had chosen not to receive booster doses of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine.

Relaying the women’s reasoning, the news website wrote:

Lan Anh, 56, who lives in Hanoi, said she had already been vaccinated with two Pfizer shots before contracting Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] in March. She believes the infection has given her enough antibodies and there was no need for a third vaccine shot this year.

Minh Phuong, 40, who lives in the northern province of Nam Dinh, said she was infected in April after getting two AstraZeneca shots. She said the majority of the population has already been infected so there’s already a decent level of immunity.

Several different types and brands of Chinese coronavirus vaccines are available for use in Vietnam. In addition to the Pfizer and AstraZeneca shots, vaccines made by pharmaceutical firms including Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are also offered.

Vietnam’s Health Ministry appointed its deputy minister, Do Xuan Tuyen, as its acting minister on June 7 after the last person to serve in the role, Nguyen Thanh Long, was arrested on suspicion of allowing a medical equipment provider to inflate the prices of Chinese coronavirus testing kits sold to state hospitals for personal profit.