From Case-Free to Lockdown : Vietnam in One Fell Swoop
"You [Pham Thi Thuy Duongm a Yenching scholar] are the very first guest today, and I highly suspect that you would be the only one. I was informed that about 2,000 people just cancelled their bookings at Hoi An Silk Village for fear of the new wave of infection.""The prediction is that not until 2023 would Hoi An tourism be able to recover. I am extremely pessimistic about my near future, and I think my worries are shared among all the locals."Tour Guide, Hoi An, UNESCO World Heritage Site, 30 kilometers from Da Nang"I just applied for a new job at an education consultancy agency. ""OVID-19 has shown me how risky it is to work in the tourism industry amidst this special time of humankind.""I think it is better I follow another career path at this moment."Dinh Que Chi, Hoi An, Vietnam
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| Residents wait to be tested at a centre as Vietnam records a rise in COVID-19 cases - MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP |
Vietnam earned plaudits from the World Health Organization, and congratulations from the global community for its successful national response to the global pandemic wreaking havoc worldwide. As a nation geographically adjacent the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it had somehow managed to evade the outbreak's worst excesses to the point where it hardly seemed touched, as though an invisible protective shield had been erected, safeguarding the communist nation of 96 million people.
For four months there was not one infection. And then suddenly, a week ago, a cluster of cases surfaced in the central resort city of Danang when a 70-year-old man became the country's first fatality from COVID-19 on Friday. Hours later another man, 61, died of the same cause, according to the Vietnamese health ministry. The disease, from all indications, appeared to have been contracted in Danang itself. And then the health ministry reported 82 new infections, 26 imported.
Suddenly the Southeast Asian nation that had fair reason to believe it had by good fortune side-stepped the kind of disaster visiting Europe and North America, Africa and elsewhere around the globe, joined them in misfortune. The total number of cases in Vietnam now registers 546, compelling Hanoi to begin mass coronavirus testing. Testing was initiated on Thursday and by Friday noon, 21,732 had been completed in the capital, according to the Hanoi Centre for Disease Control.
Of that number, 21,000 had tested negative. Large gatherings were banned, while Hanoi urged tens of thousands of domestic travellers to report to authorities. Bars and nightclubs were shut down, as well as street food vendors and karaoke lounges. Restaurants and supermarkets were given clearance to remain open, while implementing social distancing measures.
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Three hospitals were implicated in the most recent cases, along with two clinics in Danang, impelling the health ministry to send a task force of health experts along to the city accompanied by over 1,000 health workers. In Danang, authorities are building a thousand-bed field hospital intending to ease the burden on the city's hospitals, four of which are under lockdown due to a series of cases discovered there.
The complacency in the country over its success in handling the coronavirus situation had caused it to relax its vigilance and turn to restoring the economy. Tourism was being encouraged and Danang had been inundated with visitors responding to the promotions to revitalize the tourism sector hit by border closures and flight bans on international travellers.
Labels: Control, Coronavirus, Vietnam
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, August 02, 2020
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