Prof Nguyen Thanh Liem, former director of the National Hospital of Pediatrics and of the Children's Health Research Institute, said that curbing the spread of COVID-19 is important so that the healthcare system has more time and is not overwhelmed with patients. 

If Vietnam cannot control the speed of the spread and the peak comes too rapidly, this will be a catastrophe because the country's resources are much weaker than other countries.

Liem said if Vietnam succeeds with its strategy, it can curb the spread with a low rate of newly infected cases. Later, community immunity will occur step by step, or will come with a vaccine. By that time, the speed of the spread will have slowed.

“With such a strategy, the fight against the epidemic in Vietnam has brought initial encouraging results,” Liem said.

However, the expert warned that the epidemic in Vietnam has entered a new stage with cross-infection cases in the community.

Discovering the proportion of people in the community who now have immunity because of antibodies is a basic indicator to help predict the effects of COVID-19 in the future.

Discovering the proportion of people in the community who now have immunity because of antibodies is a basic indicator to help predict the effects of COVID-19 in the future.

There are two ways to discover so-called community immunity or herd immunity. The first is based on identifying patients who were positive for Covid-19 but subsequently recovered. The second is based on the number of positive cases who had no disease symptoms.

If the community immunity rate reaches 60 percent of the population, it will be possible to contain the epidemic.

As of 6 pm of April 17, Vietnam had recorded 268 COVID-19 cases, 198 of whom have recovered.

The Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) affirmed that the research on a test kit for early COVID-19 discovery has been successful. Vietnam can produce 10,000 kits per day, and can increase productivity by three times if necessary. The products can meet demand for the country and also for export .

The test kit can reveal test results after a little more than one hour.

Local newspapers quoted Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Pham Cong Tac as saying that many countries have placed orders for SARS-CoV-2 test kits produced by Vietnam.

Linh Ha

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