Despite the government’s social distancing campaign and Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi being a Covid-19 outbreak area, people need to go there for dialysis. 

Nguyen Thi Oanh, 30, has been going to Bach Mai Hospital three times a week for dialysis since she was 16.

She is from Trang Viet Commune on the outskirts of Hanoi, 33 kilometers from the hospital. But for 14 years she has been living off Le Thanh Nghi Street, five minutes away from the hospital by walk.

At 10 a.m. she goes to the hospital carrying some clothes. "If I get quarantined there, I have something to wear," she explains. Bach Mai Hospital, a major outbreak area in Hanoi, has been locked down since Saturday morning. At least 36 cases have been associated with the hospital.

Oanh goes there on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. Her life will be at risk if she fails to go for more than two days. The fistula on her arm is a sign of her years of dialysis.

Oanh and her husband Le Van Vinh rent a 10-square-meter room for VND1.5 million ($63) a month. Their area is dubbed "kidney failure patient neighborhood" since it has nine households with people who visit the hospital for dialysis. One of them returned to its hometown after Lunar New Year (in late January) to avoid the coronavirus outbreak.

Oanh makes fried rice for herself on the frying pan and rice balls for her husband. This has been their primary meal for more than a week since money ran out and they couldn’t afford shopping for food.

While Oanh makes for some rice balls for herself before leaving for the hospital, Vinh is on his phone.

He has been unemployed since mid-February around the time Covid-19 cases started in other Asian countries outside China. 

Two doors away live Nguyen Van Hung and his wife Ta Thi Sau in an even smaller room.

Hung, a veteran has been living with kidney failure for more than a decade. He lost three fingers on his left hand and one on his right to bullets, and so he cannot keep the bandage put by the doctor on his arm after dialysis from falling off. Sau accompanies him every time to the hospital. Their only source of income had been her tea stall at the Bach Mai Hospital courtyard until Hanoi's first Covid-19 infection case was reported on March 6. The control measures implemented there included the temporary removal of her tea stall.

Nguyen Hong Son, 90, of the northern province of Bac Ninh has been caring for his wife, who also has had kidney failure for the last 10 years. Dinh Thi Le has dialysis three times a week at night on the same days as Oanh. While his wife is at the hospital, Son cooks and cleans at home.

The couple do not want to go back to Bac Ninh. They say: "If we get the virus and give it to other people, that would be bad. We stay here, we don’t know where else to go."

Son’s only hobby these days is to read books and wait for his wife to return from the hospital to have dinner together.

As of Wednesday, Vietnam has had 212 Covid-19 cases, including 36 associated with the Bach Mai Hospital, now the nation’s largest infection hotspot. People in the neighborhood have been advised not to leave their homes. 

So they will be cooped up in their tiny homes, at best going to a shared courtyard in the alley. The women living with kidney failure take care of their husbands and themselves by washing dishes, selling tea on the street and collecting scrap.

But now they cannot go to work because of the outbreak.

Medical workers have been informing people living in the neighborhood about the disease since Monday. Authorities in Hai Ba Trung District will provide 10 kilograms of rice and VND1 million ($43) to each family to tide over the two-week period.

The district has also signed a contract with a supermarket to supply essential goods every two days to residents.

A separate path has been created for dialysis patients at Bach Mai Hospital. Each is given a card as a pass to go in and out. The hospital sends a van to pick up and drop off the patients.

Alley 121 alone has 105 patients are getting dialysis. Another 500 people with kidney failure are getting treatment at the hospital.