HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam approved its first COVID-19 vaccine and disrupted a major Communist Party ruling meeting, state media reported on Saturday as the country battled its biggest coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic began.
Vietnam, a country of about 98 million people that has so far been very successful in fighting the virus, has registered 180 new cases since it reported two cases of local transmission in the northern province of Hai Duong on Thursday.
This is a rapid spread, as Vietnam has recorded only 1,739 cases and 35 deaths since the disease was detected a year ago, including 873 locally transmitted infections, thanks to massive testing and a centralized quarantine program.
“We have experience handling recent outbreaks,” Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Truong Son said in a government statement on Saturday, adding that officials would try to contain the outbreak on February 6, before the Lunar New Year holidays.
The government statement indicated that materials and equipment designed to combat a hypothetical scenario of up to 10,000 cases would be deployed before the Lunar New Year holidays. The head of the coronavirus working group had previously defended a plan designed to prepare a 30,000-case scenario.
On Saturday, Vietnam closed two remote districts in Gia Lai province from the cafeteria’s highlands in the center, after at least five people tested positive for the virus, the government said.
“The disease has spread to the community, the variant is dangerous and is spreading very quickly,” says a statement adding that all cases in Gia Lai were related to the Hai Duong epicenter.
Authorities rushed to test thousands of people while authorities confirmed the outbreak had spread to Hanoi, where the ruling party is holding its five-year congress to choose a new leadership.
State media reported that the congress would end on Monday, a day ahead of schedule. The reports do not explain why and were subsequently removed from the websites of the state’s official media.
The Vietnamese health ministry approved an AstraZeneca PLC vaccine for domestic inoculation hours after Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said on Friday afternoon that the country should have a vaccine in the first quarter.
The government had previously said it was in talks to get 30 million doses of the vaccine.
The port city of Haiphong, where a case related to the new outbreak has been detected, also said it would separately try to secure 2 million doses of vaccine for its population.
Most new cases have been reported in Hai Duong, where 2,340 factory workers have been isolated after an employee came in contact with a person who tested positive for the most contagious variant of the disease B.1.1.7 from the United Kingdom on arrival in Japan in mid-January.
Reports by James Pearson, Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen; Written by James Pearson; Edited by Angus MacSwan