Covid curbs to be extended in Vietnamese capital Hanoi as cases persist

The authorities in Hanoi are set to extend existing coronavirus measures, as cases show no signs of abating, despite residents having observed two weeks of social distancing restrictions.

The Hanoi Communist Party Committee agreed on Friday to extend the Covid curbs already in place in the city, with the restrictions mandated to last until August 22. The Health Ministry defended the decision to prolong the measures, stating that the risk was still high “with the continuous detections of new clusters of infections, many of which have unidentified sources.”

The extension of measures comes as clusters of cases are becoming increasingly linked to hotspots such as markets, with Hanoi registering 61 new cases on Friday morning alone.

Social distancing measures were implemented on July 24 and originally planned to last two weeks. Eight million citizens in the capital were placed under a strict stay-at-home order, which could only be broken in case of emergencies, for essential shopping, or for work at authorized factories or businesses.

The Vietnamese capital has recorded some 1,600 coronavirus cases since the end of April, when the Southeast Asian country was struck by its fourth wave of the pandemic.

Hanoi is not the only city in Vietnam to be subject to coronavirus measures – approximately a third of the country has strict Covid curbs in place. At the end of July, restrictions in the economic hub, Ho Chi Minh City, and 18 other provinces and cities in the south of the country were extended for two weeks.

Data from the Ministry of Health shows that eight million doses of a coronavirus vaccine have been administered nationwide across the country’s 98 million population, with one in five adults in Hanoi having received at least one dose thus far.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Vietnam has recorded just over 189,000 Covid infections, with 2,720 people having succumbed to the virus.

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