[ad_1]
By James Pearson and Khanh Vu
HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam approved its first COVID-19 vaccine and halted a major meeting of the ruling Communist Party, state media reported on Saturday, as the country battled its largest coronavirus outbreak since it began of the pandemic.
Vietnam, a country of some 98 million people that has so far successfully tackled the virus, has registered 180 new cases since two locally transmitted cases were reported in northern Hai Duong province on Thursday.
This is a rapid spread given that Vietnam has only recorded 1,739 cases and 35 deaths since the disease was first detected a year ago, including 873 locally transmitted infections, thanks to mass testing and to a centralized quarantine program.
“We have experience in dealing with recent outbreaks,” Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Truong Son said in a government statement on Saturday, adding that authorities will try to contain the outbreak by February 6. , before the Lunar New Year holidays.
The government statement said that materials and equipment designed to tackle a hypothetical scenario of 10,000 cases would be deployed before the Lunar New Year holiday. The head of the coronavirus task force previously advocated a plan designed to prepare for a 30,000 case scenario.
Vietnam on Saturday on Saturday locked down two remote districts in the central highlands of Gia Lai coffee province after at least five people there tested positive for the virus, the government said.
“The disease has spread to the community, the variant is dangerous and is spreading very quickly,” said a statement, adding that all cases in Gia Lai were linked to the Hai Duong epicenter.
Authorities rushed to test thousands of people as authorities confirmed the epidemic had spread to Hanoi, where the ruling party is holding its five-year congress to choose a new leadership.
State media reported that the convention would end on Monday, a day earlier than scheduled. The reports did not say why and were subsequently removed from the websites of official state media outlets.
Vietnam’s health ministry approved a vaccine from AstraZeneca PLC for national inoculation hours after Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said on Friday evening that the country was due to have a vaccine in the first trimester.
The government had previously said it was in talks to procure 30 million doses of the vaccine.
The port city of Haiphong, where a case linked to the new outbreak has been detected, also said it will separately seek to secure 2 million doses of the vaccine for its population.
Most of the new cases have been recorded in Hai Duong, where 2,340 factory workers have been isolated after an employee came into contact with someone who tested positive for the most contagious UK variant of B disease. 1.1.7 upon arrival in Japan in mid-January.
(Reporting by James Pearson, Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen; writing by James Pearson; editing by Angus MacSwan)
[ad_2]
Source link