Hanoi (VNA) –Vietnam has continued wining plaudits from the international community for itsresponse to and results in containing COVID-19 being less wealthy thanother nations and territories seen as relatively successful in the fightagainst the pandemic.

“Like its Asian allies,Vietnam’s swift response was based on a robust pandemic response plan that wasforged after recent deadly brushes with other high-risk infectious diseases, includingSARS and H5N1,” wrote Nicola Smith, Asia correspondent of The Telegraph.

Last week, Dr JohnMacArthur, Thailand Country Director for the US Centers for Disease Control andPrevention (CDC), praised Vietnam’s response and attributed it to “strongpublic health systems, the whole-of-government approach” and a huge team of “diseasedetectives” to carry out contact tracing, he wrote.

Shashank Bengali, a staff writer of the Los Angeles Times quoted HuongLe Thu, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute as saying:“It’s pretty amazing. I’m cautious of calling Vietnam a success story. It’s tooearly to be out of the woods. But the measures have been quite effective sofar.”

In article entitled “Vietnam may have the most effective response toCOVID-19” posted on The Nations, George Black wrote: “Yet its handling of the pandemic has beenstrikingly transparent. It also has an enormous capacity for mass mobilization(not to mention a long history of it). It’s no coincidence that the governmentcalls its campaign against Covid-19 the Spring General Offensive of 2020 - anobvious echo of the General Offensive, General Uprising of 1968 - the TetOffensive.”

He also cited Todd Pollack, a professor at HarvardMedical School who directs the Partnership for Health Advancement in Vietnam inHanoi as saying that: “I see no reason to mistrust the information coming outof the government at this time. Vietnam’s response was swift and decisive. Ifthe epidemic were much larger than is being officially reported, we would seethe evidence in increased emergency room visits and hospital admissions - andwe’re not seeing it.”

“Nonetheless, what Vietnam has accomplished in these firstthree months is to buy precious time, and it has used it well,” Black wrote. “Sowhen the second wave comes, as it surely will, Vietnam has a fighting chance ofcontrolling it as well as it controlled the first. There are many lessons to belearned from its extraordinary success, although sadly it is much too late nowfor the United States to learn them.”


Reuters also run article commending Vietnam’s successes inthe fight against the pandemic. “The steps are easy to describe but difficultto implement, yet they’ve been very successful at implementing them over andover again,” it quoted Matthew Moore, a Hanoi-based official from the USCenters for Disease Control and Prevention, who has been liaising withVietnam’s government on the outbreak since early January. He added thatthe CDC has “great confidence” in the Vietnamese government’s response to thecrisis. 

“It is organised, it can make country-wide policy decisionsthat get enacted quickly and efficiently and without too much controversy,” GuyThwaites, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho ChiMinh City was cited as saying.

In article entitled “Ironwill: How Vietnam caged the coronavirus,” The Times of India also hailed Vietnam’s achievements incurbing the pandemic.

“How did this nation of 96 million with a common border withChina manage this? It appears that Vietnam threw everything including thekitchen sink at COVID-19. It was quick to recognise the danger and geared up totackle the outbreak in January itself - much before concern of the diseasespread outside China,” it wrote.

“It then approached COVID-19 like a war, declaring thatfighting the disease was akin to fighting an enemy.It mobilised all armsof the state including the army and started strict quarantine and contacttracing procedures even when the number of positive cases in Vietnam was low.”

“These measures were complemented by clear communication fromthe Vietnamese government and much publicity.”

“But the key to Vietnam’s success was the patrioticmobilisation of its people to fight Covid-19. As a nation that defeated twopowerful countries in the not so distant past, the Vietnamese government couldcount on the Vietnamese people to fight the disease on a war footing. True,Vietnam’s measures to tackle the virus were tough. But the Vietnamese peopleaccepted them and cooperated with the authorities for the larger good.”

“To be honest, most countries won’t be able to do whatVietnam did. Vietnam has specific political, social and historical conditionsthat allowed Hanoi to mobilise and undertake intensive measures. Nonetheless,Vietnam’s success holds out hope that Covid-19 can be contained and defeated.It is not something insurmountable. But the approach one chooses will certainlydetermine the time it will take. Vietnam has the socio-political means toshorten that time.”/.