We are not allowed to walk around, and breaking the rules is prohibited

Red – the color usually associated in Vietnam with luck – now wraps around doors rather than gifts. As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in Southeast Asia, homes in Ho Chi Minh with a coronavirus-positive person isolated inside are stuck up as a sign to keep your distance. The city is currently under one of the strictest closures in the world as Vietnam battles an unprecedented Covid-19 escape.

When I returned to Ho Chi Minh in January, after being away for almost a year, I went from 15 days of mandatory hotel quarantine to a “normal” life of rooftop bars and crowded streets. Through a strict entry and quarantine process, Vietnam had largely kept the coronavirus at bay. As of April of this year, Vietnam has only recorded a total of 5,400 cases of Covid-19 and 35 deaths. As of September 9, there are now 551,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with 13,701 deaths.

How has things changed so drastically in just a few months? Primarily, a combination of the highly transmissible Delta variant and an unvaccinated population of 98 million people. Vietnam has struggled to roll out its vaccine, relying on the Covax program and donations from other countries. Even after an intensified vaccination schedule, only 3.5% of the population are fully vaccinated and 16.5% have only one injection.

Most of the vaccines went to the hotspot, Ho Chi Minh, which accounts for 80% of deaths and half of infections. The city began a somewhat chaotic vaccine rollout this summer and now has more than 80% of its nine million residents vaccinated with at least one injection. I am one of them, but my digital information has not been updated with my proof of vaccination, and I am not sure when I will have my second vaccine.

Vaccine supplies are trickling in, and the city has been under total lockdown since August 23. While some levels of restrictions have been in place since late May, the latest directive is extreme. Residents aren’t even allowed to leave their homes for food – instead, the military is liaising with local unions to deliver weekly groceries.

While most lockdown restrictions are understandable – and necessary – others are difficult to understand.

I received mine last week and was impressed with the number of vegetables, although surprised at the number of types of greens and squash randomly in the package. If you’ve never Googled “squash dessert recipe”, I envy you. The food supply is affecting the entire city, and although new rules this week allowed shippers to deliver orders of fresh produce, stores are overwhelmed and deliveries take days to arrive (if they even do).

Overnight, restaurants were suddenly told they could deliver takeout after being closed for two months, but many lack the fresh produce and delivery drivers needed to operate in such a short time frame.

While most lockdown restrictions are understandable – and necessary – others are difficult to understand. Only “essential” items can be delivered (which to me means no impulse online shopping), but many real essentials such as sanitary ware and pet food are considered “non-essential”. It causes a lot of stress in the city.

Residents are not even allowed to go out for a walk and there is a citywide curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Luckily for my two foster dogs, Milk and Lord, the rules don’t apply to non-humans, so I was able to let them run down the driveway outside my house for a bit and call them inside. It is a privilege that those who live in apartments with animals do not have.

Breaking the rules is prohibited, with fines and even the risk of imprisonment. The government has even released an app where people can anonymously report sightings of rule breakers, often their neighbors.

Although I find the restrictions difficult, my worries are nothing compared to those of many townspeople, most of whom have been out of work for two to three months without any income. There is a huge demand for grassroots support, with complaints of insufficient help from the government. Messaging apps like Zalo and SOSmap.net have a mapping platform where people can ask other residents for help.

The health system is overloaded, despite field hospitals set up across the city, with 500 taxis turned into “ambulances” to transport critical patients to hospital. The government has even offered to pay patients recovered from Covid-19 in Ho Chi Minh City to stay in hospital to help staff with basic tasks.

Deaths in Ho Chi Minh are on average 200 per day and at least 250 children have been orphaned due to the Covid-19 epidemic in the city. What were once distant tragedies are now part of everyday life here. A rush of medical workers to a house three doors away from my house turned out to be aimed at an elderly neighbor, who we later learned had died.

A team of five in blue Hazmat suits came back to our driveway to spray her door to door with sanitizing chemicals. They left a mess of discarded masks, gloves and other PPE strewn on the floor outside our cluster of houses. My landlady told me the neighbors were too scared to clean up, so my roommate and I tidied the street. A neighbor gave us a precious bag of mushrooms from the farm as a sign of gratitude.

In addition to the direct impact on daily life, the current restrictions also mean that many government offices are closed and documents cannot be shipped across town. Processes that typically only take days or weeks are now severely delayed, so business and visa applications cannot be approved.

My area is orange, which means I can now leave home to pick up a grocery delivery instead of waiting for military drop-offs, but I was stopped by the police anyway

I’m in a sort of vacuum while waiting for my temporary resident card (which will be valid for two years), and a new bank account for my company registered in Vietnam has also been put on hold. I can only hope that both will be finalized soon so that I can return to Ireland for Christmas and reunite with my family and friends, whom I will not have seen for almost two years.

The government recently moved from a zero Covid-19 strategy to a new life plan with the virus, so it is hoped that restrictions will ease on September 15. What this will entail is to be guessed, as clear communication is not the strong point of government.

Ho Chi Minh has been divided into zones, color coded by red, orange and green zones according to the level of cases, the number of which can be checked on an interactive map online. But there is confusion around every corner.

My area is orange which means I can now leave the house to pick up a grocery delivery instead of waiting for military drop-offs, but I was stopped by the police anyway and had to politely argue so that I can collect my food at the barrier that currently separates my neighborhood from the main road.

I lived in South East Asia (Thailand and Vietnam) throughout the pandemic, so until recently I was protected from the impact of Covid-19. It is disturbing to see the situation deteriorating so rapidly here, and many foreigners have left the country long since the epidemic worsened. I don’t blame them, but it’s my home now, so I stay put.

Little things like seeing my neighbors giving my dogs treats through the door or sharing fruit with us strengthened my love for this country and I studied Vietnamese while in lockdown.

One phrase I have learned to say is “Viet Nam Co Lên”, which means “Vietnam!” Keep on fighting! “

Sarah Clayton-Lea has lived in South East Asia for three years and is a co-founder of bigseventravel.com