German newswire Deutsche Welle on March 26 ran an article hailing Vietnam’s effective and timely measures in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

On a bus in Hanoi (Photo: VNA)

The article said though Vietnam shares a 1,100km -long border with China, and has a weak health care system and a low budget for combating the epidemic, it has only reported about 150 infections and no fatalities since the outbreak began in January.

Vietnam has a done a good job thus far in fighting the epidemic which is raging in many countries worldwide, it said, quoting a report by the World Health Organization as saying that in Germany alone, over 47,000 people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, resulting in more than 220 fatalities.

According to the article, the Vietnamese government had "declared war" on COVID-19 as early as when the outbreak was still confined to China.

During a meeting, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said it would not be long before the virus reached the country. "Fighting this epidemic, means fighting the enemy," he said.

To take the fight, Vietnam mobilised all resources, instituted rigorous quarantine policies, and carried out complete tracing of all people who came in contact with the infected. These measures were taken much earlier in the course of the epidemic than in China, where lockdowns of entire cities were used as the last resort to keep the virus from spreading further.

For example, on February 12, Vietnam put an entire commune of 10,000 people near Hanoi under quarantine for three weeks. At this time, there were only 10 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the entire country.

While Western countries like Germany only documented those infected and their direct contacts, Vietnam kept track of second, third and fourth levels of contact to infected persons. All of these people were then placed under successively stringent levels of movement and contact restrictions.

And from very early on, anyone arriving in Vietnam from a high-risk area would be quarantined for 14 days. All schools and universities have also been closed since the beginning of February.

The author wrote that a majority of Vietnamese people agreed with and believed in the government during the fight.

Meanwhile, the Sputnik radio of Russia on March 26 also lauded Vietnam’s experience in fighting COVID-19, saying that Vietnam has set an example in the effort.

Vietnam had responded quickly when the disease was reported in China by strictly controlling the border with China and quarantining people coming from China and other disease-hit countries.

The radio underlined that the Vietnamese Government has timely informed the people of preventive measures, and Vietnamese experts successfully developed SARS-CoV-2 test kits, which are not only being used in Vietnam but also exported to other countries.

It added that the Vietnamese people have the tradition of staying united to strive overcoming difficulties, which helped the country effectively constrain the epidemic.