Seafood processors should become eligible for Covid-19 vaccinations

According to Chairman Ngo Van Ich of Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), the seafood export and process is defined as a key industry with export turnover reaching over USD 8.5 billion in three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020 and listed among the top 8 industries bringing main export turnover to the country.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic outbreaks have developed unprecedentedly and seriously as it spreads to many industrial zones where many people gather including seafood processing plants. It causes huge risks to the production and export activities of enterprises as well as employers’ health and living.

The seafood processing industry gathers a huge amount of manforce workers who usually work in a humid environment, which creates a favorable condition for the pandemic to spread rapidly and difficult to control.

As a result, if Covid-19 cases are detected in seafood processing plants, it will lead to huge consequences and losses.

First, enterprises must halt their production activities for testing works, follow quarantine requirements from 14 to 21 days leading to cracks on the supply chain. Therefore, farmers, fishermen, export and the economy are seriously affected. 

Those employers and laborers working for seafood processing plants are the mainstays of households' economy, the quarantine would stagger their family’s living as they can not work for a couple of days.

It also affects the domestic and foreign supply progress, disabling the continuity and competitiveness of countries leading to the loosening of the export market and prestige of Vietnam's seafood industry.

Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs, including a large number of poor Khmer workers in the Mekong Delta provinces. This will contribute to creating preconditions for instability in economic development, social security, and order.

Faced with that situation, on May 26, 2021, VASEP has proposed the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Health support seafood enterprises to buy and get the Covid-19 vaccine.

Accordingly, VASEP registered to buy 500,000 doses of vaccines that the Government is ordering under the Government's plan and program. The entire cost for the vaccination will be actively and fully bought by the Association and its member businesses.

On June 21, VASEP proposed to the Ministry of Health to include workers in the seafood processing and export in the priority group for Covid-19 vaccination

In the official dispatch, VASEP and its member seafood businesses expressed their appreciation for the timely policies of the Government and the Ministry of Health for directing and supporting the industry in the prevention and control of the Covid-19 pandemic in recent times.

The whole seafood industry in Vietnam has more than 4 million employees, with hundreds of thousands of workers in the processing sector alone, mostly concentrated in the Mekong Delta, Southeast, and South Central regions. Many factories employ 500-3,000 employees, some large factories employ 5,000-10,000 workers, with high labor density.

In recent months, in the context of complicated developments of the Covid-19 pandemic, the seafood industry has maintained production and promoted exports. In the first 5 months of this year, seafood exports reached USD3.27 billion in value, up 14% over the same period last year.