HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam has approved its first COVID-19 vaccine and cut short a key Communist Party ruling meeting, state media reported on Saturday as the country began its biggest coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic.
Vietnam, a country of about 98 million people that has so far been very successful in fighting the virus, has recorded 180 new cases since it reported two local cases in the northern province of Hai Duong on Thursday.
This is a rapid spread as Vietnam has recorded only 1,739 cases and 35 deaths since the disease was first detected a year ago, including 873 locally transmissible infections, thanks to mass tests and a centralized quarantine program.
“We have experience dealing with recent outbreaks,” Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Truong Son said in a government statement on Saturday, adding that officials would try to stop the outbreak by February 6 before the New Year holidays.
The government statement said materials and equipment designed to combat a hypothetical scenario of as many as 10,000 cases would be deployed before the lunar New Year holiday. The general manager of the coronavirus had previously called for a plan designed to prepare for a scenario of 30,000 cases.
Vietnam on Saturday shut down two remote districts in Gia Lai province, Central Highlands, that grow coffee after at least five people tested positive for the virus, the government said.
“The disease has spread to the community, the variant is dangerous and spreads very quickly,” reads a statement, adding that all the cases in Gia Lai are linked to the Hai Duong epicenter.
Authorities rushed to test thousands of people as authorities confirmed that the outbreak had spread to Hanoi, where the ruling party is holding its five-year congress to elect a new leadership.
State media reported that the congress would end on Monday, a day earlier than planned. The reports did not say why, and were later removed from the official state news sites.
The Vietnamese Ministry of Health has approved a vaccine from AstraZeneca PLC for domestic vaccination hours after Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said late Friday that the country should have a vaccine in the first quarter.
The government had earlier said it was in talks to obtain 30 million doses of the vaccine.
The port city of Haiphong, where a case related to the new outbreak has been detected, also said it was separately trying to secure 2 million doses of vaccination for its population.
Most of the new cases were recorded in Hai Duong, where 2,340 factory workers were isolated after one employee came in contact with a person who tested positive for the more contagious B.1.1.7 British variant of the disease on arrival in Japan in mid-January.
Reporting by James Pearson, Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen; Written by James Pearson; Edited by Angus MacSwan