People complete health declaration procedures in Tien Giang Province,
July 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Hoang Nam 

Vietnamese doctors in the U.S. have proposed online consultation for Covid-19 patients in Vietnam's southern Dong Nai and Tien Giang provinces. 

The proposal was made at an online conference on Monday, according to a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The event was joined by representatives of the ministry, the ministry’s State Committee on Overseas Vietnamese Affairs, Ho Chi Minh City’s Overseas Vietnamese Committee, authorities in Dong Nai and Tien Giang provinces and Vietnam’s Consul General in San Francisco, Nguyen Trac Toan.

As proposed by the Vietnamese-American doctors, the group, including 40 members who are doctors, nurses and volunteers, would like to offer help via the Telehealth system, the use of digital information and communication technologies, such as computers and mobile devices, to access health care services remotely and offer support.

The group is now ready to operate and guarantees to protect the private information of patients.

They said their capacity would be 200-300 patients for every four hours per day and in order for the project to work, they would need support from local authorities to connect with patients, transfer medicine, along with devices for blood oxygen saturation monitoring.

Their choice to support Dong Nai and Tien Giang is considered practical, timely and meaningful as the two provinces are in the group of five localities with the highest number of new daily infections in the country for now.

Tien Giang Province has started letting Covid-19 patients treat themselves at home with support from the healthcare sector while Dong Nai, which borders HCMC, said it would apply the plan if cases rise to 30,000-40,000 in future from the current 23,000.

Consul General Toan said Vietnamese-Americans in the West Coast had donated and sent home more than $300,000 to help Vietnam fight the pandemic, 255 ventilators, breathing aids and medical equipment and supplies valued at nearly $1 million.

They also wrote petitions to ask the U.S. government to supply vaccines to Vietnam.

Vietnam was hit by its fourth Covid-19 wave four months ago and has yet to put it under control.

The nation has so far recorded 445,292 community infections and more than 11,000 deaths.