HANOI (Reuters) – There were so few cases of coronavirus in Vietnam that each patient was known by a number: Patient 17 brought the virus from Europe after an initial wave of Wuhan infections. Patient 91, a British pilot, almost died.
Medical specialists wearing protective suits collect blood samples from a woman who returned after traveling to Da Nang at a rapid testing center for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on the outskirts of Hanoi, Vietnam, on Dec. 30. July 2020. REUTERS / Kham
Now there is a new number that has become an unwanted marker.
Patient 416, a 57-year-old man in the central city of Danang, tested positive for coronavirus last week after more than three months without a new infection in the Southeast Asian country.
In just over a few days, a total of 47 people linked to Danang tested positive, indicating the start of a third wave of infections, impossible to trace and more worrying, in a country that had reopened faster than most of the world, trusting that the disease had overcome.
The increase has spread to six cities and provinces in six days, including Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and the Central Highlands.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc hit his fist on the table during a meeting on Wednesday in which he warned that the entire country was now at risk of infection.
“Everyone, including health workers, had let their guard down months before the virus was reintroduced,” said Truong Huu Khanh, head of the infectious disease department at Nhi Dong I Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.
“People had stopped wearing masks in public, and some health workers did not pay enough attention to” high risk “cases.”
So successful was its fight against COVID-19 that the post-pandemic “new normal” in Vietnam closely resembled the old. The bars, restaurants and hotels had reopened with minimal measures of social distancing. In early July, the number of domestic air passengers even increased by 27% compared to the previous year, according to state media.
But that oasis in a world affected by a pandemic began to disintegrate when patient 416 went to a local hospital in Danang with a cough and fever. The last person to test positive for an infection in the community was a 16-year-old girl in April.
Patient 416 was initially diagnosed with pneumonia, according to the Vietnam Health Ministry, and did not test positive for the coronavirus until July 23. Days before, he had visited other hospitals in Danang to help him sick mother, and attended a party and a wedding.
The Vietnam outbreak had been under control, thanks to an aggressive contact tracking system and a centralized quarantine program, which had kept the coronavirus count in less than 500 cases, with no deaths.
“We acted fast and fiercely in March, but the virus is still emerging worldwide,” said Khanh.
“We cannot let our guard down. This third wave is the cost of a moment of complacency. ”
PATIENCE TEST
The origin of the Danang outbreak is unclear.
The news of patient 416’s infection caused the mass exodus of more than 80,000 tourists from the popular tourist city. On Thursday, authorities in Hanoi said mass testing of 20,000 of those tourists who had returned to the capital would begin, as Vietnam’s human-powered contact tracking system was redistributed.
Some of the latest cases, including patient 449, a Danang-based American citizen who appears to have developed symptoms in mid-June, indicate that the virus had quietly spread in the city for several weeks.
It was unclear when patient 449, who according to the health ministry suffered from chronic pneumonia, was examined for the virus, but was treated for COVID-like symptoms at three different hospitals before testing positive at a fourth hospital in Ho Chi City. Minh.
The health ministry stopped publishing test data in mid-May, when 260,000 tests were conducted.
On Monday, the ministry said it had completed 430,000 tests since the pandemic began, indicating that the tests continued to increase as thousands of Vietnamese who returned abroad were quarantined.
However, it was unclear to what extent testing of COVID-19 outside of quarantine had continued. Khanh said that some external tests, especially in patients with symptoms of pneumonia, had been in force but on a significantly smaller scale.
Although the two problems have not been officially linked, the government has in recent days made several forceful statements about illegal immigration, indicating that the source of the new infections may have come from abroad.
“I think it’s most likely a reintroduction of the virus from somewhere else, sometime in the last two months, but how, when, or where they remain completely speculative today,” said Guy Thwaites, director of the Clinical Research Unit at Oxford University in Ho Chi. Minh City.
“What is happening now in Vietnam was almost inevitable. It is almost impossible to isolate an entire country from a global pandemic, “said Thwaites
“Cases will occur.”
(This story corrects the name to ‘Khanh’ in paragraphs seven, 13 and 22)
Report by James Pearson; Additional reports from Phuong Nguyen and Khanh Vu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan
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