Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh instructed the Ministry of Health to begin the process of turning the country into a life with Covid-19 and treating it as endemic even as cases increase.
According to a report on the government’s website, the prime minister has ordered officials during the March 3 cabinet meeting to investigate how other countries have taken the move. The prime minister said March and the coming months will remain difficult and unpredictable as the country battles the virus and the fallout from the conflict in Ukraine.
Given the emergence of several COVID-19 variants worldwide, including Omicron, many experts believe that achieving the goal of herd immunity to eradicate the disease is difficult, and that COVID-19 is approaching the endemic disease stage.
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Vietnam registered 118,790 virus cases on Thursday, including 10 imported, an increase of 8,500 from a day earlier, according to the latest report on the Ministry of Health’s website.
The country, which is rolling out booster shots after more than 90% of the adult population received two vaccine shots, has seen a dramatic drop in Covid-19 deaths.
According to the publication Suc Khoe Doi Song of the Ministry of Health, an average of 95 people have been killed every day for the past seven days.
In August, when the government closed large parts of the country with curfews, more than 300 deaths were daily from viruses, the Bloomberg reported.
COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency
Herd immunity is widely seen as a lifeline to end the pandemic in the long term. Humanity has achieved herd immunity at least once, eradicating smallpox thanks to the development of vaccines. In the case of COVID-19, however, experts believe herd immunity is unlikely as the pandemic enters its third year.
dr. Anna Blakney of the University of British Columbia in Canada admitted that despite certain benefits, it was still difficult to even consider achieving the goal of herd immunity due to the constant emergence of mutations of the virus.
Theoretically, the pandemic could be considered over when experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) declare that COVID-19 is no longer classified as a global health emergency. Nevertheless, the criteria for making this decision have yet to be precisely defined.
While they wait for the WHO to reach a conclusion, politicians and public health experts in high-vaccination countries are promoting a new approach to COVID-19, with many seeing the disease as part of life.
For example, Thai health authorities believe that the outbreak of COVID-19 has basically been brought under control and that the disease is now not too serious, especially when people have received full doses of vaccine. They are therefore working to declare COVID-19 as an endemic disease according to their own set of criteria, rather than waiting for the disease to naturally become endemic because it could take longer, according to a report on VOV.
