The article posted on the newspaper
Entitled “How Vietnam crushed its second coronavirus wave”, the article posted on the newspaper on September 27 stated that as of July 24, Vietnam enjoyed its 99th straight day without any known transmission of the novel coronavirus. “While the international borders remained closed to all but a handful of specific flights, life inside the country would have appeared shockingly normal to much of the world: domestic tourism was fully functioning, restaurants and bars were busy, and social distancing regulations had ended,” the article said.
After the new community spread case was announced in Da Nang city with unknown source, “the outbreak spread rapidly, and within a few weeks hundreds of new cases were detected in Da Nang, largely concentrated in a cluster of hospitals, while Vietnam’s coronavirus-related death toll jumped from zero to 35.”
“In the ensuing days, infections were discovered in 15 other cities and provinces, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the capital and largest city, respectively,” the article noted.
According to the article, “unlike in March, however, when Vietnam faced its first major outbreak and implemented nationwide social distancing regulations, the government decided to take a more local approach in order to avoid large-scale economic damage,” while “Da Nang was placed under the strictest lockdown yet seen in the country, with transport to and from the city shut down and almost all businesses ordered closed, other regions remained relatively open. Bars, karaoke parlors and nightclubs were closed in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, while gatherings of more than 30 people were banned and masks were made mandatory in public again. However, other aspects of daily life were allowed to carry on normally.”
The article highlighted Vietnam’s massive COVID-19 testing as an “extremely effective” way for anyone “returning to these cities from Da Nang before its lockdown began, which included tens of thousands of people, and any new patients were isolated while rapid, detailed contact tracing was conducted.”
The article also recognized mass communication to be an important factor in the fight against COVID-19, with routine text messages sent to all mobile phone subscribers with health and safety advice and precautions.
Information used in the article showed that “by the end of August, the Da Nang lockdown and aggressive testing and tracing elsewhere in the country had slowed the outbreak to a crawl, and Vietnam has now gone over three weeks without any detected community transmission, ending this wave.”
The author commented that “after successfully containing its first outbreak in March and April, Vietnam can now take pride in defeating the coronavirus twice” as “only 40 cases remain active nationwide, and an air of confidence has returned to the streets.”/.