/ KUCINTA SETIA
Image courtesy : VNA
According to the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) on 30 July 2020, Hanoi has imported 219 covid cases from Equatorial Guinea. These cases are Vietnamese work permit holders in Equatorial Guinea.
Vietnam Airlines cooperated with the Vietnam Embassy in Angola (accredited to Equatorial Guinea) to arrange the relief flight to Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, from Hanoi via Paris on 26 July 2020. The outbound flight for Hanoi from Malabo via Paris using its Airbus A350XWB aircraft took off on 28 July 2020 and arrived in Hanoi on 29 July 2020.
The Vietnamese passengers and crew of the relief flight are under quarantine treatment at the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Dong Anh District, Hanoi.
As of 31 July 2020, Vietnam has reported a total of 509 confirmed covid cases with additions of 45 new covid cases in Danang and five more covid cases in Quang Nam. 369 cases have recovered and discharged while 53,760 people are under quarantine in health centres or at home. One death from Danang is reported.
According to VNA, the relevant authorities are collecting 10,000 samples from residents of Danang for virus testing. The preliminary research by medical experts found that the strains of SARS-CoV-2 that appeared in Danang and Quang Nam Province this time are strains that have not appeared in Vietnam before and have mutated. These strains are more aggressive than previously known coronaviruses in Vietnam, and their rapid proliferation speed can make infected patients quickly enter a severe state.
Nguyen Thanh Long, the Acting Minister of the Ministry of Health of Vietnam, told the media that the source of infection in the new cases has not yet been identified but it has been found that the virus genome has changed and its transmission power has increased significantly.
Todd Pollack, an infectious disease expert at Harvard Medical School who is conducting medical plans in Vietnam, believes that this new strain may have been brought into Vietnam by illegal immigrants, or it may be the result of the virus mutated in a hospital in Danang.
Prior to this, the Vietnamese authorities had released information on 26 July that dozens of Chinese nationals sneaking illegally into Vietnam were arrested in Danang and neighboring provinces this month. Although the authorities did not clearly identify that the new outbreak is related to smugglers, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered a thorough investigation of smugglers at the border and strengthened border patrols by setting up 146 round-the-clock checkpoints. Therefore, Vietnamese people believe that the new wave of epidemic is related to this, and local anti-PRC sentiment has rapidly increased as a result.
The Vietnamese authorities have evacuated 80,000 tourists and ordered that from 28 July, Danang implement social distancing measures and block Danang’s external land and air traffic for 15 days.
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