Resisting Covid-19: Lessons from Vietnam to Bangladesh
The battle against Covid-19 is now more challenging than ever before in Bangladesh. When the whole world is aiming to bend the COVID-19 curve, it is most certainly been an absolute struggle for many of the countries to do so. The world is now at a standstill. We are running out of ways to shield ourselves from the heinous grasp of this apocalyptic virus that has led most economies to face a severe downturn. The impending global recession that is now approaching worldwide, have some serious impacts. Even with strong healthcare systems, the most powerful countries worldwide have been defeated to curb the COVID-19 spread. But South Asian country Vietnam has shown outstanding progress in fighting the pandemic.
Vietnam has become the first South Asian country to ease tough movement restrictions designed to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Vietnam, with a population of about 95 million, has confirmed its first case on January 23. They have confirmed 328 cases and zero deaths so far and 307 recoveries. Vietnam has managed to achieve this astonishing feat without actually announcing a nationwide lockdown. Even after having a long land border with China, where the spread of the virus has first evolved from, the authorities have shown tremendous performance in fighting the virus. They have taken a measure of “Proactive Prevention”. Prevention is better than cure was something Vietnam has shown through their journey in fighting the virus. A high-level Vietnamese envoy, Tran Quang Tuyan, has reportedly said that “Early awareness of the pandemic, appropriate, drastic and people-centric measures, as well as public support”, are the main factors behind the success of Vietnam”. While other countries debated and argued about lockdowns, Vietnam shut its borders as soon as China confirmed its first cluster of COVID cases and introduced a system to find out anyone potentially infected with the virus. Contact tracing was the most effective measure they could take, knowing their inadequate health care facilities, lack of advanced medical technologies, and in general a weak healthcare system. Being a developing economy, their take on this virus was quite impressive as the government made sure they had a proper strategic plan to deal with the pandemic. The SARS outbreak in 2002 prompted investment and measures to protect people and train for health emergencies. Initially, contact tracing was done by teams of community trackers but very soon an app was built to trace not only primary contacts but secondary and 3rd and 4th level too.
As all the contacts are being recorded into the data of the community. Besides the aggressive contact tracing other measures such as compulsory quarantine and conscription of medical students. The swift mobilization of the military and medical workers also contributed to their war against the Coronavirus. Every village and neighborhood and streets were brought under surveillance of the security officials. The spread of “Fake news” on different social media platform have a fatal impact on the current world situation. But Vietnam handled it quite well as they have fined almost 800 people found sharing such news.
Bangladesh also is a developing economy and having a poor healthcare system and low budget funds has many things to learn from Vietnam’s success in winning the ongoing war against the Coronavirus. The fruitfulness of the current zone-coded lockdown is yet to be discovered. As the Vietnamese government has succeeded by being proactive in their prevention measures, we should also utilize our remaining time by taking preventive measures rather than fighting it after. Effective public communication campaigns need to be held. The quick development of the testing kits also played a key role in their success. Most people entering the country of Vietnam were being sent to government facilities for 14 days. Those inside the country who had been in contact with a confirmed case were either sent to those facilities or strictly forced to quarantine at home. Everyone in quarantined received 3 testings. Fighting the epidemic as though fighting against an enemy was their focal point. Quarantining effectively at the right time, providing necessary medical facilities, assisting with proper medical attention and human resources can be helpful to dominate the current corona situation of Bangladesh. All sorts of preventive measures, detection of the infected, distinct zoning, timely isolation may prove to be resourceful. If effective cluster quarantine and tests can be applied to our country, it might show some positive results. Marking different zones as red, green, and yellow like the way it’s been done in the US might hardly be helpful in Bangladesh unless people for those people who would avoid going to the risky zones. The Healthcare system needs to be more cost-effective, testing kits must be more accessible to the common. Health care interventions need to be more intensified.
As Bangladesh is facing a hard time curbing and controlling the outbreak of the virus, proper leadership and strategic planning are highly required for the salvage of this economy from completely shattering.
Works Cited:
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Dhaka Tribune. 2020. What Vietnam Can Teach Bangladesh About Fighting Coronavirus. [online] Available at: <https://www.dhakatribune.com/world/2020/04/06/what-vietnam-can-teach-bangladesh-on-fighting-coronavirus> [Accessed 18 June 2020].
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The Daily Star. 2020. Fighting The Virus: Vietnam’S Covid-19 Success Story. [online] Available at: <https://www.thedailystar.net/world/news/fighting-the-virus-vietnams-covid-19-success-story-1899388> [Accessed 18 June 2020].
Sarkar, S., 2020. Economic Fallouts from Covid-19. [online] The Financial Express. Available at: <https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/views/economic-fallouts-from-covid-19-1585582385> [Accessed 18 June 2020].
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