Vietnam to deploy all its resources to contain new Covid outbreak
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Aug 3 (efe-epa).- Vietnam announced on Monday it would deploy all of its resources to curbing infections and preventing the massive spread of Covid-19 beyond Danang, the coastal city that is the hotspot of the latest outbreak in the country.
The Southeast Asian state is witnessing its largest coronavirus wave since the start of the pandemic.
At a weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc urged all administrations to contain the spread of the virus and limit the number of deaths, six since Friday, after seven months without a single casualty in the country due to coronavirus.
Phuc said that the beginning of August would be decisive in tackling the clusters and said that the latest outbreak detected in the country could hit harder, being three times more contagious than previous ones (the infection rate is around six people per infected person).
The appeal by Phuc came after the country recorded its first six coronavirus deaths over the weekend while infections have continued to soar to 621, 242.
Over a dozen of active infections are in critical condition.
Danang remains the main epicenter of the new outbreak with 120 of the 174 infections along with four other cases reported by the Lao Dong newspaper in four different factories of an industrial complex employing 77,000 workers outside the city.
Given the concentration of cases in Danang, the country’s third most populated city, municipal authorities announced over the weekend that they would test its more than 1.1 million inhabitants for the virus over the next few weeks.
The municipal department of health has mobilized 600 medical students and 100 technicians to collect 10,000 tests a day while work to set up a field hospital in a sports complex will be completed this week.
Since Danang is a popular tourist destination – over 800,000 domestic tourists visited the city in the last month – the new outbreak in the city has raised fears that the virus could spread uncontrollably, so large cities including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh – both with several cases – have also launched a mass-testing campaign.
