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Vietnam’s new Covid wave tally tops 5,000 with 52 new local Covid-19 cases Friday morning.
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Tracking wristbands for quarantine management to be tested in Vietnam.
Vietnam’s Health Ministry confirmed 52 new local Covid-19 cases Friday morning, bringing the number of infections in the ongoing wave to 5,008.
The new cases were recorded in the northern provinces of Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, Thai Binh and Hanoi.
In Bac Giang, 35 new Covid-19 patients are all related to clusters at industrial parks and have been isolated prior to testing.
Bac Ninh reported 14 cases, including six related to its Khac Niem industrial park, three linked to Que Vo industrial park, two associated with a cluster in its Thuan Thanh District. For the remaining three, health authorities are still looking into their source of transmission.
For the two cases in Hanoi, one is a 39-year-old man living at the Hemisco Xa La apartment building in Ha Dong District who got infected after a trip to HCMC. He visited the southern metropolis on May 26 and worked at a real estate company on Vo Van Kiet Street, District 1, which has recorded three infections linked to the city’s religious mission cluster. He returned to Hanoi four days later and self-isolated himself at home before testing positive.
The other case is a person who has had contact with a Covid-19 patient.
The patient in Thai Binh is a woman who is related to a former cluster and has already been isolated, VNExpress reported.
Vietnam considers to use tracking wristbands for quarantine management
Tracking wristbands for managing Covid-19 quarantine protocols will be trialed next week, the Authority of Information Technology Application has said.
The wristband, developed by tech firm Ginnovations, utilizes GPS technology and will send out an alert if the wearer exits a quarantine zone.
It is a single-use wristband, meaning if the user removes it, it will send a warning to authorities and a new one has to be used to continue tracking, according to a spokesperson at the AITA under the Ministry of Information and Communications.
It is to help manage people who need to be quarantined at home as a Covid precautionary measure, and could also be used to monitor those who have been in contact with patients, allowing them to be quarantined at home, the spokesperson added.
Besides tracking, the wristband also scans body temperature, detects altitude changes and calorie consumption and is waterproof, according to Ginnovations.
Its batteries are likely to last for around 30 days, and its price is expected to be $35.
For the tests next week the wristband will be used by passengers on certain flights coming to Vietnam.
Vietnam is not the only country considering the use of tracking wristbands to manage people in quarantine. Others like Singapore and South Korea have used the technology to monitor people who have flouted Covid prevention rules.
Vietnam has been suffering the fourth wave of Covid-19 for 39 days. Infections have been recorded in 37 of its 63 cities and provinces.
Bac Giang and Bac Ninh continue to account for most cases, at 2,713 and 965, followed by Hanoi with 430, of whom more than 140 are in two hospitals under lockdown, and HCMC with 288.
Since the pandemic broke out, Vietnam has recorded 8,115 cases, including more than 3,000 recoveries and 49 deaths, according to VNExpress.