The Ho Chi Minh City Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control has issued a set of indicators to assess the risk of novel coronavirus infection for businesses.

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Any business that scores more than 80% on the index will be asked to shut down completely. This assessment tool will help businesses decide whether it is safe to resume their work during the current pandemic.

The indicators are based on factors like the number of workers, density of workers, percentage of workers who wash their hands with alcohol-based sanitizers when entering or leaving the workplace, and percentage of workers who wear masks while working. 

Other factors include the percentage of workers whose temperatures are checked before entering the workplace, distance between workers in the cafeteria, number of workers traveling to or from work in a shared vehicle, availability of facemasks, and number of workers who work a night shift. Higher scores indicate greater risk.

Nguyen Duc Trung, Deputy Head of the Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs Section of Thu Duc district, said the indicators have been used at 9 companies with more than 1,000 employees each. One company scored 35% due to short distances between workers. The others had lower scores. 

Mr. Trung noted the indicators are relative, but they make all enterprises more aware of the need for disease prevention measures.

"The companies have made prompt adjustments as recommended. They all praised the indicators and cooperated with us in applying them," said Trung.

The Ho Chi Minh Center for Disease Control and Prevention has set up teams to review the use of the indicators at 51 businesses. 

Nguyen Thien Nhan, Ho Chi Minh City’s Party Secretary, said it’s important to get local enterprises to use the indicators to assess their disease prevention. He asked the teams to gather feedback in order to improve the indicators. 

Mr. Nhan said, "We need to use the indicators to assess safety when allowing enterprises to resume their work. We must make sure that every enterprise gets assessed."

The Department of Environment Management of the Ministry of Health wants to use Ho Chi Minh City’s assessment tool in factories with more than 5,000 workers.