Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long. Photo by Tran Minh.

Chairing an online meeting on Covid-19 prevention with local authorities on February 19, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said the Politburo's view is to give priority to fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. The secretaries of local Party Committees must take responsibility for disease prevention in their localities.

"The prevention of Covid-19 cannot end in the first six months of the year, even in 2021," he said. Therefore, local governments need to prepare for all situations and must not neglect disease prevention.

He asked provinces and cities to immediately prepare three scenarios:

Firstly, localities must prepare quarantine centers for F1 cases. The Ministry of Health and the National Steering Committee for Epidemic Prevention and Control is to thoroughly isolate F1 cases to prevent disease transmission in the community.

Secondly, localities need to tighten management over its population so that when an epidemic occurs, the local authority can thoroughly know about the situation.

Thirdly, localities are asked to immediately prepare testing plans so that in necessary cases they can perform large numbers of tests and can increase testing capacity in a very short time.

Fourthly, local governments need to prepare a plan for the treatment of many patients at the same time as currently the department of infectious diseases at local hospitals can only accommodate 10-20 patients. Hai Duong province, the country’s largest Covid-19 hotspot, had to set up three field hospitals.

The Ministry of Health has just put into operation a new system of medical declaration via QR code, based on health records of over 97 million people, to better serve Covid-19 tracing and epidemiological investigations.

Thuy Hanh

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