A balloon vendor uses her mobile phone as she waits for customers in Hanoi on March 8, 2022.
(NHAC NGUYEN / AFP)
As Vietnam considers treating COVID-19 as endemic, experts warn this does not mean the disease presents no danger.
Under the “new normal” it is OK to view COVID-19 as a common disease, said Tikki Pang, visiting professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. However, this does not mean the disease is totally harmless, Pang said.
Though Omicron tends to cause milder symptoms, or show no symptoms, compared with the previous variants, “the disease can still have serious consequences, even death, in those who are unvaccinated, elderly, or have underlying serious diseases”, Pang told China Daily.
Vietnam at the moment is actually facing the peak of the Omicron curve. But in the next few weeks, if everything goes according to prior experience from other countries, the Omicron (infections) should go down.
Maurizio Trevisan, professor and dean of health sciences at VinUniversity in Hanoi.
Vietnam’s Health Ministry proposed on March 5 to stop providing daily COVID-19 updates because “they do not reflect the true nature of the pandemic situation” and can cause needless worry among people, local media VnExpress reported.
The ministry is taking gradual steps toward treating COVID-19 as a common disease at an appropriate time, according to the report. The move came after Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said on March 3 that the country will move toward “normalizing” the COVID-19 pandemic and considering it an endemic disease.
Despite rising daily infections, Vietnamese Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said the rates of hospitalization, severe cases and deaths have significantly dropped.
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Vietnam’s daily COVID-19 cases rose to a new record high of 147,358 on March 7, up 5,222 cases from the previous day, according to data from its Health Ministry. The infections brought the total caseload to nearly 4.6 million, with 40,891 deaths.
Compared with the numbers in January, the number of community cases nationwide increased 198 percent in the past month, but deaths from the disease fell 47 percent, the ministry said on March 5. The number of severe and critical cases also dropped, by 43 percent.
“Vietnam at the moment is actually facing the peak of the Omicron curve,” said Maurizio Trevisan, professor and dean of health sciences at VinUniversity in Hanoi. “But in the next few weeks, if everything goes according to prior experience from other countries, the Omicron (infections) should go down.”
Noting Vietnam is moving forward aggressively with the booster shot after some 80 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, Trevisan said the severity of the disease has been much reduced thanks to the high vaccination rate.
Even in Hanoi, which has some of the highest COVID-19 case numbers in Vietnam, the hospitals are not overwhelmed as a majority of cases with mild symptoms are treated at home, said Trevisan.
Yet Trevisan said COVID-19 should not be regarded as harmless because even influenza can lead to death due to complications.
“We need to continue to monitor (the pandemic situation) and be flexible enough to change strategies,” said Trevisan, adding that treating COVID-19 as endemic does not mean going back to the pre-COVID-19 life completely as there might be a new wave or new variant.
Vietnam’s Health Ministry also cited cautions from the World Health Organization and other countries that the pandemic will not be completely under control before 2023.
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Le Hong Hiep, senior fellow and coordinator of the Vietnam Studies program at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said it is in the government’s interest to push the country’s performance so it can meet its development targets, including reaching an upper-middle-income status by 2030.
Though it may not be the right time immediately for Vietnam to treat COVID-19 as endemic, Hiep said the move toward it will not cause a lot of problems for the economy as long as there are no large-scale lockdowns as seen in the last year.
Vietnam’s Health Ministry also cited cautions from the World Health Organization and other countries that the pandemic will not be completely under control before 2023
In 2021, Vietnam’s GDP growth fell short of expectations at 2.58 percent, mainly due to the Delta wave in the third quarter that created serious disruption to the manufacturing sector. The country’s economy is expected to grow 5.5 percent this year, according to the World Bank.
For Vietnam, “the benefits of opening up the economy and restoring economic activity is far bigger than the cost of containing the virus with strict measures”, said Hiep, who hopes Vietnam’s experience can also provide lessons to countries like China.
“The trend is definitely toward treating COVID-19 as a ‘normal disease’ in many countries,” said Pang from the National University of Singapore, citing Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia as examples.
“In fact, I would say it is already endemic in all countries in the region,” said Pang, noting the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 will become endemic regardless of what governments do.
As more countries in Southeast Asia mull treating COVID-19 as a common disease, Pang said it is important to continue vaccination programs, maintain and enforce proven public health measures, ensure the healthcare systems are ready to deal with severe cases, and sustain public education and awareness programs.
