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“The New Year’s Eve is approaching, this Tet holiday will be really special. There is no other way, people should celebrate Tet at home since there is no idea that when the pandemic will be put under control”, Ho Chi Minh City Party Secretary Nguyen Van Nen said at a meeting of the Steering Committee for Covid-19 prevention and control on the afternoon of February 9, VNExpress reported.

Ho Chi Minh City Party Secretary Nguyen Van Nen at a meeting of the Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control. Photo courtesy of Ho Chi Minh City Press Center.

Ho Chi Minh leader also said that this year the health sector cannot celebrate Tet and neither can farmers in the Western and Southeast provinces as their flowers and ornamental trees transported to Ho Chi Minh city have been affected due to the epidemic.

According to the Party Secretary, the pandemic in the city has developed sophisticatedly and the risk of infection in the community is very high because the source of transmission and the starting time has not been identified. Therefore, everyone needs to strictly implement epidemic preventive measures and the Steering Committee needs to make all-out efforts to soon control the epidemic.

"When necessary, Directives 15 and 16 of the Prime Minister will be applied, but it must be suitable to the situation of each region, minimizing the impacts on the daily lives of the locals," Nen added.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong requested the health sector to prepare scenarios for emergency situations, from facilities such as field hospitals, isolation facilities, test kits to medical staff, etc.

A medical worker takes sample of a local man during a mass testing in HCMC's District 1. Photo courtesy of Ho Chi Minh City CDC.

Phong appealed to people to strictly comply with regulations on the Covid-19 prevention and control especially wearing face masks.“Since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in the city last year, never does it record up to 25 cases in a single day. Hence, the Covid-19 situation in the city must be placed at the high risk”, Phong said.

The southern metropolis has reported 32 community transmission cases since the third wave of the Covid-19 swept through the country on January 28. The authorities conducted contact tracing and take samples of 1,324 F1 cases of these patients for Covid-19 testing. 926 samples of which have been negative.

The city has also blockaded 18 places and taken 5.851 samples of residents for Covid-19 testing. In addition, 1622 employees at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport have been retested.

Ho Chi Minh City has prepared 840 beds for Covid-19 treatment along with 30 recovery beds and it can raise to 1,400 and 60 if needed. Each day, the city can take 100,000 samples and test 30,000 to 40,000 samples.

So far, Vietnam has reported 2,068 Covid-19 cases, with 1,176 local community transmission. The total recoveries are 1,474, while the number of fatalities remained at 35.

Among patients still under treatment, 14 have tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 once, 14 twice and four thrice.

More than 99,850 people are being quarantined across the country.

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