Canada newswire: Vietnam – standard in COVID-19 fight

Guest workers repatriated from the Republic of Korea are kept in quarantine at a military unit in Da Nang city (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) -  Canada’s Globe and Mail newswire on May 27ran an article saying that Vietnam’s COVID-19 fighting record will stand out as a remarkable,perhaps unique, achievement, calling the country as a standard in the fight.

The article said Vietnamhas been loosening quarantine measures since late April. Patient 91, a 43-year-old British pilot, is onlife support in a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, and saving him has become anational priority. His condition deteriorated to the point that he wasleft with only 10-percent lung capacity.

It stressed that Vietnam’ssuccess was no accident. Its 1,450km border with China and frequentvisitors from Wuhan, the site of the original outbreak in December and January,meant that Vietnam could have been overrun with cases. But it acted fastand did not wait for official warnings from the World Health Organisation (WHO)before it closed its borders, locked down its economy and launched masstesting, tracing and quarantine measures.

Guy Thwaites, aprofessor of infectious diseases and Director of the Oxford University ClinicalResearch Unit in Vietnam, said the country swung into action early because itwas well aware of the dangers of unchecked infectious diseases. In the past 20years, it has suffered from outbreaks of SARS, avian influenza, measles, denguefever and hand-foot-and-mouth disease, which attacks young children.

“The Vietnamese arevery respectful of the threat of infectious diseases and know they have to betreated early,” he said. “They were well prepared”.

A new academic reporton Vietnam’s response to the pandemic, written by Prof. Thwaites and about 20doctors and scientists, concluded that the early lockdown plus the extensivetesting, contact tracing and mandatory quarantines for people who had come intocontact with anyone who had tested positive were behind Vietnam’s success inpreventing COVID-19 deaths. It said the tracing and quarantine measures were “especiallyeffective given that nearly half of those infected did not develop symptoms.”

By the beginning ofMay, more than 200,000 people had been put into quarantine in governmentbuildings, military camps, hotels or at home.

Thwaites said the tracing effort did not rely onsophisticated technology, but old-fashioned, shoe-leather epidemiology. Most ofthe country’s relatively few cases were travellers, including Vietnamesenationals, flying into the country.

He said he believes thelow infection figures and lack of fatalities to be accurate, as he has accessto official data and visits to local hospitals./.

VNA