The country has so far confirmed 271 positive cases for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including 219 recoveries (81%) and no deaths.
There were 131 cases from abroad that were isolated upon entry into Vietnam, with the latest recorded on Sunday evening. Patient 217, a 37-year-old British man, landed in Ho Chi Minh City-based Tan Son Nhat International Airport on April 28 onboard a private plane from the UK with 12 other passengers who are all oil experts. They were taken to a concentrated quarantine area in the city’s Can Gio District upon their arrival.
The flight crew of this flight immediately flew back to the UK without entering Vietnam.
The patient was confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 on April 7 in his country but only isolated himself at home. As of April 21, the patient had a negative test result and was issued a negative test certificate with SARS-CoV-2, before coming to Vietnam on April 28.
He and his colleagues from the same expert group were sampled for the first time in Vietnam on April 28 and had negative results. On May 2, they were sampled for a second test. The patient's result was positive for SARS-CoV-2 but the remaining 12 were negative.
Currently, the patient has no fever, no cough, no sore throat or other symptoms. Because the patient was quarantined upon entry, there is no infectious factor spread to the community.
As there could be more infections from entries into Vietnam during this period, Ho Chi Minh City authorities have decided that isolated cases after their entry would be sampled four times, on the first, fifth, tenth and the last day before their full 14 days of isolation end, instead of just taking samples for testing on the first and last day of the period as required.
According to the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, there are 12 patients who have tested negative for the virus once and nine others tested negative twice or more as of Monday morning.
A total 27,409 people who had close contact with patients or came from pandemic-hit countries are under quarantine at hospitals, concentrated quarantine areas, or at home.
Vietnam has carried out a total of over 261,000 tests so far, with 51 units permitted by the MOH to conduct COVID-19 confirming tests by combining both gene detection test (PCR) and antibody test (rapid test) methods.
Meanwhile, the MOH’s Company for Vaccine and Biological Production No.1 (VABIOTECH) has gained initial success in studying a potential coronavirus vaccine and it has tested injections on mice over the past two weeks.
Right after the first COVID-19 case was reported in Vietnam in January, the company partnered with the UK’s University of Bristol to conduct research on the vaccine.
Blood test samples on mice will be sent to the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology for evaluation.
Dr. Do Tuan Dat, Chairman of VABIOTECH, said that after this stage, the COVID-19 vaccine will continue to be studied on animals to further assess its safety and immunogenicity.
