The VTC provided training on monitoring, treatment andcare of infected people for medical workers from more than 700 district-basedhealthcare clinics nationwide.
As of the end of August 12, Vietnam documented more than242,600 COVID-19 cases. Nearly 500 patients with severe COVID-19 are beingtreated in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Twenty-one are in critical conditionsand receiving ECMO support. The death toll has reached nearly 4,800.
Addressing the event, Long said reducing fatalitiesremains one of the priorities in virus control efforts in all cities andprovinces, so the healthcare system must be re-organised in a way that providespatients with the fastest and most convenient access and delivers the bestpossible services.
Long suggested cities and provinces to adopt the three-tieredtreatment model, with the first being temporary COVID-19 hospitals and grassroots medicalfacilities, including home-based and community-based ones, which are designedto care for asymptomatic patients.
The second tier should be district-level medical clinicsor higher which will be tasked to treat those with moderate COVID-19 symptoms.This tier plays a very important role because if it performs well, it can preventthe patients’ conditions from worsening and save their life, the minister said.
The last tier will be ICUs that admit those in criticalconditions, he noted.
In the face of ongoing COVID-19 case spike, the Ministry ofHealth required all localities to prepare themselves with ICU medicalsupplies and equipment, he said, urging that the localities must, withoutdelay, boost capacity of all the tiers to the maximum in order to not be caughtoff guard by the virus.
Minister Long further noted that his ministry will pilota scheme for clinical monitoring and treatment of COVID-19 patients at home inHo Chi Minh City and some other cities and provinces, and test Molnupiravir, adrug proving effective in reducing virus concentrations, in treating COVID-19patients in the coming time.
He called on businesses to boost imports of the drug and pharmaceuticalfirms to negotiate with Molnupiravir producers about production technologytransfer./.