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Delivery people wait their turn to take the novel coronavirus test in HCMC on September 20, 2021. Photo by VnExpress / Quynh Tran |
HCMC administered nearly 9.2 doses of the vaccine to people over the age of 18, and nearly 2.4 million received two injections.
The ministry document also regulates that Covid-19 patients will only be allowed to self-isolate at home for treatment if they live in high or very high risk areas. All shopping malls and tourist activities will be suspended as soon as a place is tagged very high risk.
“The rule for sending Covid-19 patients to centralized camps should be removed to move to the new normal. The health sector should have specific guidelines for treating Covid-19 patients at home,” the associations said. .
They said the transition to life with Covid-19, which means people have been fully vaccinated, will result in a huge waste of resources and strain on the health system when Vietnam continues to send all Covid patients. -19 in centralized facilities.
They also said restrictions on travel and participation in public activities applied to those who have fully immunized and those who have already recovered from Covid-19 only because they live in an infected area are “unnecessary” .
Anyone who has been fully vaccinated should be allowed to work, and appropriate pandemic control measures should be based on the occupancy rate of hospital beds and intensive care units in each locality, the associations said. .
They also pointed to unreasonable rules on easing restrictions. Draft guidance document says any location with fewer than 20 new cases in 100,000 people in a week would be classified as low risk, regardless of vaccination rate
This rule, according to companies, would pose a significant threat in so-called low-risk localities in the event of a cluster appearance, given that few people who live there have been vaccinated.
So far, 38 cities and provinces across the country are deemed to have ‘brought the epidemic under control’ and relaxed social distancing restrictions after reporting continued decline in new cases, and not because they have a vaccination rate raised.
Associations cite Hanoi as an example: at the threshold of 20 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the capital would declare 230 new cases every day for its population of approximately eight million inhabitants.
In the last few months of the ongoing Covid-19 wave, Hanoi was recording 50 to 70 new cases every day, and it had taken the city nearly two months to impose the strictest social distancing measures.
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A task force removes a makeshift barrier to blockade an area with Covid-19 in Thanh Xuan Bac neighborhood of Thanh Xuan district in Hanoi, September 21, 2021. Photo by VnExpress / Ngoc Thanh |
Flexible solutions
To safely coexist with Covid-19, professional associations have proposed solutions to flexibly implement the pandemic control and economic recovery strategy.
In the transition phase, which is expected to last by early next year, places with high immunization coverage rates should be allowed to reopen first.
In such places, there should be two categories separating the pandemic control areas. Category 1 would cover areas that are still struggling with community epidemics. They will impose Directive 16, which forbids everyone to go out except for “essential purposes”.
However, travel restrictions should be removed for fully vaccinated and Covid-19 recoveries. These two groups should also be allowed to go to work.
In addition, regulations restricting economic activities should be removed and patients should be allowed to self-isolate and be treated at home, except for severe cases requiring hospitalization.
The healthcare industry should have specific guidelines for companies on what to do when employees are infected. Under no circumstances should the entire production and commercial establishment be closed when cases are detected.
Category 2 would apply to areas where the pandemic is spreading slowly or where there is no epidemic where the transition to the new normal would take three to five months.
In the event of infection in the community, lockdown measures should be imposed on the smallest scale.
If the infection rate rises to more than 0.7 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants per day for a consecutive week, the alert level will be raised but still, no large-scale blockade will be imposed. Areas where people have been fully vaccinated will move directly to the new standard and lift all lockdowns.
For the phase of life with the virus, which is expected to start from the middle of the first trimester of next year or earlier depending on immunization coverage, each zone will reopen depending on when it reaches the national target of more. 70% of the population. 18 years of age and over being fully immunized.
While social distancing measures should be imposed in accordance with the pandemic situation, production and commercial activities, as well as public transport, should be allowed to operate at full capacity at all pandemic levels.
Travel restrictions between regions, whether for the transport of passengers or goods, should be removed. The companies have also proposed that all centralized quarantine camps be closed and that those who come in contact with a Covid-19 patient be asked to self-isolate at home.
