Today’s Covid News: Vietnam to improve testing capacity

Vietnam’s Ministry of Health has asked authorized agencies to improve testing capacity in the face of widespread Covid-19 transmission.

Accordingly, the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE), Pasteur Institutes, and medical facilities in big cities need to ensure their maximum capacity to return the results at the earliest.

So far, the country has 196 medical centers eligible to conduct Covid-19 testing.

Testing in Hanoi. Photo: Khanh Huy/ Phap Luat Xa Hoi

Ho Chi Minh City 

Ho Chi Minh City on August 9 decided to reopen a number of wet markets to meet the demand in the city of more than 10 million people in the face of partial lockdown and curfew.

The move will be done together with the operation of mobile shopping places. It aimed to facilitate the purchase and avoid crowd gathering in supermarkets and mini stores.

To ensure sufficient supply, supermarkets namely Co.op, Satra, Bach Hoa Xanh, Lotte, Aeon, MM Mega Market, BigC, and Emart are required to stockpile essential goods and boost online transactions.

Covid-19 has forced the city to close all three wholesale markets, 201 out of 234 wet markets, and dozens of supermarkets and mini-stores, causing difficulties for the locals.

Hanoi

The city’s health sector has built a scenario to have 40,000 infections. In that case, it predicts about 8,000 patients on the critical list.

The city also issued four-level treatment plans with asymptomatic cases to be treated at the first level which will be makeshift hospitals, the second level for mild patients will be district and specialized hospitals, and the third and fourth levels will be available for critical cases.

With an aim to detect index cases in the community, the city will conduct testing from August 10 to August 17 for 300,000 people in high-risk areas and vulnerable groups.

Hanoi reported 78 more cases today, totaling 2,079.

A batch of Germany-donated test kits arrives at Tan Son Nhat International Airport, HCM City on August 9. Photo: Vietnam Airlines

Vaccines

On August 9, the Czech Republic pledged to resell 500,000 vaccine doses and a large number of rapid test kits to Vietnam in a phone talk between Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and his Czech Republic counterpart Andrej Babiš.

Babiš said his cabinet will call for more vaccine supply for Vietnam from their available kinds such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Sinopharm in return for the valuable support that the government of Vietnam and the Vietnamese community made to the Czech people in the first wave of the pandemic.

Earlier, Czech announced to donate to Vietnam 250,000 doses of vaccines.

On August 9, a batch of 4.5 tons of Germany-donated test kits arrived in Vietnam. The medical equipment will be allocated to Ho Chi Minh City and Binh Duong, the two current epicenters.

On the same day, Hong Kong-based conglomerate Sunwah donated medical equipment worth US$200,000 for the northwestern province of Lao Cai which borders China.

A group of Vietnamese lawyers in the US and Ho Chi Minh City led by lawyer Vo Duc Duy has expressed their wish to donate 50,000 vials of Moderna vaccine to Ho Chi Minh City to contribute to the fight against Covid-19 in the most populous city.

Daily infections

Vietnam saw 9,340 new Covid-19 infections, 4,423 people recovered, and 360 deaths in the past 24 hours, mainly in Ho Chi Minh City and Binh Duong.

To date, the most affected areas remain Ho Chi Minh City (125,795) and its neighbors, including Binh Duong (30,526), Long An (10,402), Dong Nai (8,457), and Tay Ninh (2,710).

As of August 9, the tally hit 219,745, including 35% convalescents.

So far, more than 9.4 million vaccine doses administered, including 946,000 fully inoculated.

Vietnam's Covid-19 infections. Source: MoH. Chart: Minh Vu