How Vietnam Beat COVID

The small, densely-packed, developing country of Vietnam is proving to poor and rich countries alike that it doesn’t take a revolutionary approach to contain a pandemic-causing virus.



Investing in health pays off

A rapidly growing economy over the past few decades has seen Vietnam’s poverty rates decline and living standards dramatically improve. The Vietnamese government, who Park says has been committed to investing in the country’s preparedness for infectious disease outbreaks, poured these earnings into its health sector.

With support from the WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other partners, Vietnam has also developed long-term plans for coping with infectious disease outbreaks. This has included the establishment of national and regional emergency operations centers, whose staff regularly participate in training and simulation exercises.

“For years, the WHO has been supporting Vietnam in building and strengthening these capacities for managing disease outbreaks and public health emergencies, as required by the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005),” said Park in an interview with Asian Scientist Magazine. “Guided by the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases and Public Health Emergencies, Vietnam has made significant progress in enhancing capacity in these areas.”

Vietnam’s preparations were put to the test soon after China reported a cluster of “cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology” late in December of 2019. The Vietnamese government proactively conducted its first risk assessment in early January, a few days after China reported its first death on January 11, and quickly mobilized all levels of its centralized health system soon after.

This included the Ministry of Health at the national level down through all departments at the provincial, district and community levels. From the establishment of a national response plan and technical guidelines, to training all hospitals to provide treatment to patients, the entire Vietnamese health system was quickly prepared for what was to come.

One of Vietnam’s most successful strategies in managing the spread of COVID-19 has been its aggressive contact-tracing method, which tracks cases according to degrees of contact with an infected person—dubbed F0—as far removed as F5. The success of this comprehensive and low-cost strategy is underscored by the mobilization of all levels of its health system along with public security and military personnel and civil servants, who help local health officials identify an F0 patient’s contacts once infection has been confirmed.

Vietnam has also made attempts to use technology to aid its efforts. On March 10, 2020, Vietnam’s Ministry of Health launched NCOVI, an app that allows individuals to update their health status to complement the country’s manual contract-tracing strategies.

This was followed in late April by the release of a contact-tracing app called Bluezone, at a time when the country had already contained its initial wave of COVID-19 cases. The Bluezone app did not take off until the country’s second major wave of the virus in late July.

These technologies represent small steps by Vietnam toward the digital transformation of its health sector and are in complete contrast to the heavy reliance on technology of some of its more tech-savvy neighbors.

South Korea, for example, has used its advanced internet infrastructures to initiate mandatory tracking of its citizens through their smartphones. Singapore was one of the first countries in the world to launch a contact-tracing app—TraceTogether—on March 20 and has also developed a chatbot to help employers stay up-to-date with COVID-19-related news.

As the pandemic and scientific evidence have evolved, so have the Vietnam’s strategies. The national response plan and technical guidelines have been continuously revised and updated, and health departments have established projects to continue to improve the country’s response.

For example, the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, which acts as one of the country’s four regional emergency operations centers, established the Vietnam COVID-19 Emergency Response Project on July 30.

“The Vietnam COVID-19 Emergency Response Project sponsored by World Bank aims to support Vietnam in strengthening its capacity for detection and response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Le Thi Quynh Mai, an associate professor and head of the Influenza Laboratory at the institute, told Asian Scientist Magazine.

Mai, who has published studies on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 between people, has been working on ways to improve testing capacity across laboratories in the country. This has included holding workshops to train staff at hospitals and provincial centers to test for SARS-CoV-2 using molecular methods like real-time RT-PCR, which detects the amount of viral RNA in a sample; and serological methods, which detect the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

As evidence mounts that asymptomatic cases and pre-symptomatic transmission contribute substantially to the spread of SARS-CoV-2, Mai and her team are also using serosurveillance to learn more about the prevalence of mild and asymptomatic COVID-19 infection and antibody-based immunity in a community.

Heidi has a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Sydney, Australia. She is now a science editor and writer, where she enjoys combining her proclivity for science and prose.

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