Vietnam yesterday deployed soldiers to the streets of Ho Chi Minh City to help enforce a strict lockdown in the nation’s biggest urban area and the current epicenter of its worst COVID-19 outbreak to date.
After managing to contain COVID-19 for much of last year, Vietnam has recorded a total of 348,000 infections and at least 8,277 fatalities.
Most of those cases have been recorded in Ho Chi Minh City and its surrounding industrial provinces, where the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has sent numbers soaring since late April.
Photo: AP
Vietnam implemented movement restrictions in Ho Chi Minh City early last month, but announced its harshest curbs yet last week, as infections have continued to surge. Authorities have said the enforcement of recent curbs had not been sufficiently strict.
The government on Friday said a tighter lockdown would begin yesterday, prohibiting people from leaving their homes, even for food, and said the military would step in to help.
The announcement, which was later amended so that people in some areas could still shop for food, but then subsequently reverted to a total ban, triggered confusion and panic-buying at supermarkets over the weekend.
Witnesses said soldiers were yesterday delivering food to residents of the city and images broadcast by state media showed armed soldiers manning checkpoints and checking documents.
Ho Chi Minh City has recorded a total of 176,000 COVID-19 infections and 6,670 deaths, accounting for half of Vietnam’s overall cases and 80 percent of fatalities, the Ministry of Health said.
Vietnam has over the past few weeks sent 14,600 additional doctors and nurses to the city and its neighboring provinces to support its overwhelmed medical system, the ministry said.
Patients with mild or no symptoms have been told to self isolate at home.
People in the city’s Phu Nhuan and Go Vap districts told Reuters they had received packages of rice, meat, fish and vegetables from the military.
Just 1.8 percent of Vietnam’s 98 million people have been fully vaccinated — one of the lowest rates in the region.
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