PM urges greater caution amid further COVID-19 developments

In his speech, the Vietnamese cabinet leader stated that pandemic prevention and control efforts have been effective as the COVID-19 pandemic has been brought under control. As a result, remarkable improvements have been recorded in macroeconomic stability, inflation control, economic recovery, and growth.

This has been achieved along with ensuring major balances, boosting the recovery of the labour market, whilst maintaining independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, political stability, social order, and safety, as well as enhancing external activities and improving people's lives.

The country has therefore determined that vaccines are a decisive part in terms of pandemic prevention and control and has duly carried out a vaccine strategy with a specific focus on building a vaccine fund, launching a vaccine diplomacy campaign, and initiating the country’s largest vaccination campaign.

However, the pandemic situation remains complicated, while in some places citizens remain apathetic regarding pandemic developments, resulting in slow vaccination.

Due to this, PM Chinh requested that members of the Steering Committee, ministries, sectors, and localities analyse the various causes of this and devise solutions aimed at dealing with the situation.

According to a report provided by the Steering Committee as of September 11, the world recorded over 613 million cases of COVID-19, including over 6.5 million deaths. At present, the Omicron variant of the SAR-CoV2 virus is dominating other variants.

Furthermore, Vietnam has so far detected more than 11.4 million COVID-19 cases, with 10.3 million people having recovered from the disease and over 43,000 having died.

August alone saw a total of 72,324 cases recorded, an increase of 2.4 times compared to July, 24 deaths, a rise of 18 cases compared to July.

The seven-day period between September 5 and September 11 saw the country record an average of roughly 2,900 new cases per day, with the number of infections now on the rise again.

Regarding vaccinations, as of the end of September 11, the nation had injected 258.7 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. In line with this, the rate of injection of first and second jabs for people aged 12 years and over is approximately 100%, while the rate of third injections for people aged 18 years and over reached 77.0%. The rate of fourth shots of people from 12 to 18 years old stood at 55.2%, whilst the rate of fourth injections for those over 18 is 77.0%.

Moving forward, the Steering Committee anticipates that the pandemic will still endure unpredictable developments globally. The World Health Organization (WHO) assesses that the world is still in a pandemic phase and warns of new variants of SARS-CoV-2 which could complicate the COVID-19 pandemic.

Therefore, vaccines remain an important measure in pandemic prevention, and control, meaning it is necessary to continue to promote vaccinations, while staying active in devising scenarios and plans to respond to all possible pandemic situations.