On September 3, Nguyen Van Long, deputy head of the Department of Animal Health said that they had started testing imported frozen meat after there was news that SARS-CoV-2 had been found on frozen food in China. They took nearly 200 samples from frozen shrimp, chicken wings and other meat imported into Vietnam from 15 countries for testing.

"We haven't found any infected food. We'll continue taking samples and testing," he said.

Five laboratories have been granted certificates by the Ministry of Health to carry out Realtime RT PCR tests including the National Centre for Veterinary Diagnosis, Area 2 Veterinary Department in Hai Phong, Area 3 Veterinary Department in Nghe An, Area 6 Veterinary Department in HCM City and Area 7 Veterinary Department in Can Tho City.

The five laboratories have enough test kits for at least 5,000 samples. Departments of health in many localities have sent them recent samples.

In the coming time, the Department of Animal Health will ask the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to provide more funds and ask the Ministry of Health to help provide more test kits.

From 2013 to 2019, the laboratories of the Department of Animal Health had worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the National Institute of Hygiene And Epidemiology to monitor and take thousands of testing samples from wild animals like bats, hedgehogs and rats to see whether they carry the strains of Coronavirus, Flavivirus, Paramyxovirus, Rhabdovirus, Henipavirus, Filovirus or Hantavirus. Dtinews/Tienphong