HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – The Vietnamese government said it is sending troops to Ho Chi Minh City to help deliver food and help households as it further tightens restrictions on people’s movements in the midst of a crisis. worsening coronavirus increase.
Army personnel will be deployed to help with logistics as the city of 10 million people asks residents to stay for two weeks from Monday, a report on the government website reported on Friday.
The step comes when Vietnam, which suffered greatly from the pandemic with very few cases, recorded more than 10,000 new infections and 390 deaths on Friday. The city of Ho Chi Minh City accounted for 3,500 of these infections.
“People need to remain absolutely isolated from each other, from house to house, from community to community,” Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said during a meeting Friday with the southern provinces affected by the outbreak.
The prime minister also called on migrant workers to stay in the city to prevent the spread of the virus as they flee before new movement restrictions come into force.
Ho Chi Minh City has established strict coronavirus measures since June, which include banning meetings of more than two people in public and only allowing people to leave home for essential issues such as buying food or going to work in certain areas. authorized businesses. Under the new measures, people in high-risk areas cannot leave their homes.
The city has created more than a dozen temporary hospitals to treat patients with COVID-19, but the high number of active cases means thousands of patients cannot be hospitalized. According to the Ministry of Health, some 19,000 patients with mild symptoms have been asked to stay home with a medical assistant from mobile medical teams in their communities.
In Hanoi, the capital, authorities on Friday extended the measures to contain the virus for two more weeks. People staying there must stay home and be allowed to go shopping for food three times a week using the assigned coupons.
Vietnam managed to keep the infection rate relatively low until April and until then had only recorded 35 deaths. Since August, it has recorded an average of more than 300 deaths daily.