Vietnam conducts over 1 million COVID-19 tests

Health woker collects specimens from a person returning from Da Nang city to test for COVID-19 infections (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA)
– The Vietnamese health ministry said it has conducted more than one million
since the COVID-19 pandemic first began in late January.

In the first stage lasting 44 days from January 22 to March 5, since the first
cases recorded in the country to the 16th patient, 3,094 specimens were
processed, translating to a daily capacity of merely 70 tests.

The second phase lasting 47 days from March 6 to April 22, 182,109 specimens
were processed, equivalent to 3,874 samples a day.

This period marked the ‘second wave’ of infections in Vietnam, with
many imported cases and subsequent closure of borders on March 22, after a brief
two weeks with no reported cases since the 16th case.

The third phase, lasting 91 days, from April 23 to July 23, a total of 237,815
specimens were processed, translating to handling of 16,173 specimens a day.

This was within the period of Vietnam’s 99 days of no recorded community
infections and only imported cases, a streak that ended on July 25 when Patient
416 was confirmed in Da Nang, leading to the discovery of several hundred local
infections connected to this outbreak in the coastal city.

From July 24 to August 24, the national daily capacity jumped to 16,173
specimens a day, with more than 485,215 specimens processed within a span
of 30 days.

By 3pm on August 28, Vietnam has performed a total of 1,009,145 tests using
RT-PCR technique, according to the Department of Preventive Medicine under
the Ministry of Health.

The ministry noted that the number of COVID-19 tests performed within
the past month alone reached the same as the amount carried out in
the first six months into the pandemic, given the spread of the virus into
the community which demanded quick testing on a larger scale of the
population to properly carry out the strategy of quickly identifying,
isolating cases, tracing their close contacts and eventually
suppressing the outbreaks.

Vietnam currently has 71 facilities that can perform confirmatory
tests, capable of conducting a total of 34,000 tests a day.

On August 20, the
health ministry sent an urgent notice to all State-managed hospitals and health
centres to increase SARS-CoV-2 screenings to early detect COVID-19 cases in a
bid to reduce risks of the virus infiltration into wards where patients are in
poor health, which happened in Da Nang, resulting in the majority of related
deaths./.