Vietnam has approved its first vaccine for the new coronavirus and cut short a key ruling Communist Party meeting as it battled its biggest flare-up yet of Covid-19, Reuters reported quoting state media reported.

The government had previously said it was in talks to procure 30 million doses of the vaccine.

The port city of Haiphong, where a case linked to the new outbreak has been detected, also said it would separately seek to secure 2m vaccine doses for the city’s population.