Deputy Prime Minister Vuc Duc Dam chairs the meeting. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – The spread of COVID-19
in central Da Nang city and province has been gradually contained and
the situation is expected to be under control by late August, according to
.
At a meeting of the national steering committee
for COVID-19 prevention and control in Hanoi on August 18, Long said the number
of new infections in and Quang Nam has fallen in recent days, from an average
of 20 cases a day from August 3 to 9 to about 10 cases from August 10 to 17.
New hotspots may still appear nationwide, he
warned, and he demanded that all localities remain on high alert to detect new
cases in a timely manner, as the sooner infections are found the more effective
efforts to stamp out the disease will be.
He pointed out that although experts have issued
strong warnings, people are not sufficiently vigilant against transmission.
He called for dramatic solutions to slow down and
limit transmissions, calling on all people to install the Bluezone contact
tracing app and the NCOVI health declaration app on their smartphones.
Regarding the development of a vaccine, Tran Dac
Phu, advisor to Vietnam’s public health emergency operations centre, said many
countries have conducted COVID-19 vaccine tests on animals before conducting human
trials.
If vaccines used in other countries are
imported, Vietnam will not test them on animals but will do so on humans to
ensure their effectiveness and safety. This process often lasts between six
months and a year or even several years before widespread vaccinations, he
noted.
Before effective vaccines or specialised
medicine are available, people must remain on guard for a long period of time
in a spirit of “safely adapting to the pandemic”, experts have urged.
They also proposed warning levels for
be raised, especially in major cities and populous regions, while protecting
medical facilities, retirement homes, and social protection centres, as well as
frontline forces, from transmission.
Members of the steering committee asked the
Ministry of Health to continue enhancing testing capacity and requested that localities
strictly quarantine the more than 100,000 foreign experts and workers entering
the country.
Asking for more technical solutions to trace
high-risk people, they said that aside from encouraging people to use Bluezone
and NCOVI, it is also necessary to make it compulsory for foreigners entering
Vietnam or those with second- or third-hand contact with confirmed cases to
install these apps./.
Source: VietnamPlus
