“Little expense has been spared to try save the life of the 43-year-old man,” the article asserted.
The article stated his case has garnered national interest in Vietnam, where the government has won broad support for its campaign to contain the coronavirus, updating the number of voluntary lung donors, including a 70-year-old military veteran.
The article quoted foreign ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang saying that said the pilot’s underlying health issues had worsened his condition, but that Vietnam’s “best experts and doctors” will try to save him.
A majority of patients treated at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases (Photo: CPV)
“Vietnam has been a bright spot during the COVID-19 pandemic — and has largely reopened for business,” said the US National Public Radio (NPR), adding that thanks to aggressive contact tracing, quarantines and testing, it's managed to keep its confirmed coronavirus cases to around 300, with no deaths.
Mentioning Vietnamese people volunteering to donate a lung to the British patient, the article said that doctors in a hospital in Ho Chi Minh city are struggling to save a patient from becoming the country's first COVID-19 fatality.
Vietnam’s preventive measures continued to be highlighted in foreign newspapers. In the article “Coronavirus: How 'overreaction' made Vietnam a virus success”, BBC wrote: “unlike other countries now seeing infections and deaths on a huge scale, Vietnam saw a small window to act early on and used it fully. But though cost-effective, its intrusive and labour intensive approach has its drawbacks and experts say it may be too late for most other countries to learn from its success.”
"It very, very quickly acted in ways which seemed to be quite extreme at the time but were subsequently shown to be rather sensible," the news quoted Prof Guy Thwaites, director of Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in Ho Chi Minh city, which works with the government on its infectious disease programmes.
"The government and population are very, very used to dealing with infectious diseases and are respectful of them, probably far more so than wealthier countries. They know how to respond to these things,” the article said.
Entitled “Aggressive testing and pop songs: how Vietnam contained the coronavirus”, an article by The Guardian stated “As of 30 April, Vietnam has a coronavirus death count of zero and only 270 cases. While the mortality numbers climb into the hundreds of thousands across the world, Vietnam has managed to contain the outbreak of coronavirus through timeliness, aggressive infection control, mass mobilisation of its population and an unprecedented level of openness.”
New York Times also followed Vietnam’s efforts in treating the British pilot, with a hope that a lung transplant could save him.
Singapore’s Channel News Asia praised the Vietnamese Government’s timely action to detain the pandemic, saying that foreigners praised the country’s efforts and showed gratitude for living in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh city, not in their countries./.