Vietnam adjusts COVID-19 controlling target from controlling infections to controlling serious cases and deaths only, while heading to remove the disease from its “especially dangerous” list.
The approach has been specified in a government resolution issued Thursday about COVID-19 prevention and control work in 2022 and 2023, local media reported.
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Vietnam’s overarching goal in the period is to ensure effective disease control, protect the life and health of the people, minimize the number of serious illnesses and deaths caused by disease, and enable economic recovery and development, the document said.
According to the report, death number in Vietnam has been decreasing in recent months thanks to high vaccination coverage. In the past week, though new infections rose 16 percent to over 171,400 cases per day on average, fatalities declined by 14 percent to 75 cases, according to data from its health ministry. As of Thursday, over 201 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered to a population of about 98 million.
Based on the real situation, the country will consider delisting COVID-19 as a Class A infectious disease, the list of diseases that are classified as “especially dangerous,” and to view it as just a “dangerous” infectious disease.
As per Vietnamese regulations, Class A infectious diseases include those with high infection and death rates, like polio, influenza A-H5N1, plague, Ebola, Lassa and Marburg hemorrhagic fever, West Nile fever, yellow fever and cholera.
In April 2020, the Vietnamese government declared COVID-19 a national epidemic, listing it as a Class A infectious disease, according to the news agency.
Vietnam has fully reopened its borders for international tourists since March 15, foreign nationals can now enter Vietnam by air, land and sea through all border gates as long as they meet the COVID-19 prevention and control requirements.
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Source: Vietnam Insider