Are you wondering why your country was not able to keep infected numbers under control whilst few other countries were able to do so? Let me tell you why.
I am an English Teacher in Vietnam and I've been here since June 2019 which is waaaay before the virus struck. This article is based on my viewpoint. See covid-19 stats for Vietnam at the end of this article.
Vietnam is a neighboring country to the south of China with a population of over 97 million people. This is a developing country that still has a lot of poverty stricken areas.
In late January as the 2 week school holiday approached (from January 20th), things seemed to be normal for us and we were going on with life, excited to have a little break and proper sleep. As the Lunar New Year celebrations went on, we started to see some things on the internet about an illness in China but we were not too bothered by it; this was around January 26th. The streets in the CBD was crowded due to the celebrations. Shortly after, we read a lot more about this virus and it started to sound very serious. We were set to return to school on February 3rd but things did not go as they were supposed to.
On the evening of the 2nd February, we were informed that school will remain closed for 1 more week due to the viral outbreak. As the week passed, we were again told that school would remain closed and that for 2 weeks this time. Every update we received was one of the People's Committee agreed on keeping schools closed for 2 more weeks. It seemed that this decision was reviewed every 2 weeks with an official agreement being released to the public after their decision was made.
Fast forward to early March 2020. With schools still being closed, flights were blocked from high risk countries and foreign travelers entering the country would be put into immediate quarantine whether they showed symptoms or not.
Late March brought upon the closure of bars, pubs, movie theaters and all other public places including restaurants and places of worship.
By this time, no lockdown was put into place but the public was warned to exercise social distancing and the mandatory wearing of a mask. Since then we've had building security guards standing ready to check our temperatures whenever we enter as well as sanitize our hands. This was put into place in apartment buildings, business buildings as well as shopping centers, supermarkets and banks. We still have this measure in place and it proves to be working well. All international flights were ceased by the time and every single person entering at the border needed to go into quarantine. At this time, the infected rate was too high for the likelihood of the government or better yet, the health risk of the public.
April came and went and we were put on a 15-20 day lockdown whilst still being able to get essentials and go for a jog. The most important rule we saw being stuck to was that we wore our masks and so did other people. It wasn't a question of this or that. We would normally wear it due to pollution so it was nothing new for anyone, not even kids!
We've now had several days of no new infections and more recoveries than current infected so we must have been doing something right.
From the start of the virus til now a lot of areas has been put in mandatory quarantine where there's been a patient zero. This is truly important to keep the virus under control or to keep it from spiraling on.
Here are the stats for Vietnam:
Feel free to check the news on https://tuoitrenews.vn/ to stay updated.
Great read, great article we need more