Vietnam: High risk of new Covid outbreak

Vietnamese Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long suggested localities to review and control people returning from Ho Chi Minh City, Long An, Binh Duong and Dong Nai.

Vietnam’s Health Minister said it was necessary to be vigilant to prevent a new outbreak.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Long issued the warning as authorities evaluated 10 days to implement a resolution described as “safe adaptation, flexibility, effective control of the COVID-19 epidemic.”

Basically, we have now controlled the epidemic situation in key areas such as Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Long An, Dong Nai and some other localities.

However, after easing social distance, the number of people traveling from epidemic areas to localities is very high and outbreaks have appeared, the source of infection is mainly from people returning from epidemic areas.

Therefore, it is recommended that localities must review and control people returning from HCM City, Long An, Binh Duong and Dong Nai to promptly detect and implement appropriate epidemic prevention measures.

People returning from epidemic areas are eligible for home health monitoring, but that does not mean “relaxing” but must rely on the community COVID team to regularly check and monitor.”

We expressed concern that the risk of an epidemic outbreak would be very large in the near future. Therefore, localities must raise their vigilance to the epidemic,” Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said on October 24.

The head of Vietnam’s health sector also said that provinces such as Phu Tho, Thanh Hoa, Nam Dinh and some localities in the Southwest region have recorded many cases related to people returning from epidemic areas.

It is reported that An Giang, Dak Lak, and Ben Tre provinces still have outbreaks of infection in the community. In particular, today in Quoc Oai district, Hanoi recorded 7 cases of infection in the community with unknown sources of infection.

It is known that there are some localities with high vaccine coverage, but there are still some localities that have not achieved a low injection rate.

Vietnam’s Minister of Health also reiterated the policy that localities should blockade and isolate “as small as possible“.

The average number of new Covid cases in the country in the past 7 days was 3,544 cases/day and the number of deaths recorded was 68 cases/day.

The total number of deaths from Covid-19 in Vietnam so far is 21,673, accounting for 2.5% of the total number of infections.

As of October 24, the whole of Vietnam has injected more than 73 doses of Covid-19 vaccine, of which the 1 dose is about 52 million and the second injection is 21 million.

Thoibao.de (Translated)

Source: https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/vietnam-59029320