The Health Ministry confirmed no fresh Covid-19 case Wednesday evening, meaning the nation remained clear of community transmissions for 20 consecutive days.
It also kept Vietnam’s Covid-19 tally at 271 from Sunday evening. Of these 232 have recovered and 39 are still under treatment.
In case you missed it: Vietnam records one more coronavirus relapse case, 20 days without community transmission in the country
Today, a ten-year-old COVID-19 patient in HCMC tests positive again after previously being given the all-clear. The patient was the 10th case in the city to have tested positive again. Vietnam News Agency reported.
Given the rise in relapse cases, Vice Chairman of the city’s People’s Committee Le Thanh Liem urged the local health sector to continue monitoring patients who have been discharged through daily testing for 30 days.
“Rejected proposal” to lift distancing rule on plane has been approved.
The Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam sent an official document to propose to the Ministry of Transport on May 4 to completely lift the distancing rule during flights so that planes can carry passengers with full capacity from May 5. However, the ministry said that the one metre-distancing rule is important during the check-in procedures, queuing or sitting on planes. Other preventative measures must also be kept.
Related: Ministry of Transport turned down a proposal to remove the distancing rule on flights
The CAAV also proposed to the ministry to adjust the implementation time of flight frequencies on domestic routes. According to the proposal, from May 5, there should have been 52 return flights on Hanoi-HCM City route, 20 flights on Hanoi-Danang and 20 flights on HCM City-Danang. Other routes should have the number of flights based on demand.
But, the “Rejected proposal” has been approved today by Ministry of Transport.
Reopening and the early coronavirus containment efforts may help Vietnam avoid a recession
On Monday, millions of students went back to school after three months at home, making Vietnam one of the first in Southeast Asia to ease movement restrictions. The country closed schools in early February when the first local cases were detected.
Despite sharing a land border with China where the coronavirus first emerged, Communist Vietnam has reported just 271 cases and no deaths in a population under 100 million. It has not reported any new local cases for 20 days in a row.
Vietnam’s success in containing the virus is attributed to decisive measures the country made early in the outbreak, building off its experience with SARS in 2003. Back then, it was the first country to be removed from a list of countries with local transmissions, according to the World Health Organization. CNBC reported.
This time, Vietnam implemented tough controls on travel and people who were potentially infected very early in the outbreak, “as other Southeast Asian states dithered,” wrote Huong Le Thu, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank.
The government was quick to lock down the country. It quarantined anyone entering Vietnam and stopped Chinese tour groups as well as direct business to and from China, Le Thu wrote in a post on the Council on Foreign Relations website. Vietnam suspended all international flights on March 20 following a new wave of infections from European arrivals.
Hanoi also mobilized intensive contract tracing methods, Le Thu added.
“The fact that Vietnam has a pervasive security state, and can enlist the armed forces (as well as large numbers of civilians) makes it easier for Hanoi to do this kind of public health surveillance,” Le Thu wrote.
While there may be questions about the reliability of Vietnam’s figures, Capital Economics said in a recent note that it is unlikely Hanoi would end the shutdown if it wasn’t confident that the outbreak was under control.
“This is clearly good news for the economy,” wrote Gareth Leather, senior Asia economist at Capital Economics.
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected 212 countries and territories, with almost 257,000 deaths reported so far.
Compiling by Vietnam Insider
