Covid-19: Only 268 cases and no deaths. How did Vietnam with 97M people do it?

We have been in Vietnam since March 8th. Prior to that we were in Thailand. The response of these two neighbouring countries is night and day.

Authoritarian governments can shine during the crisis. In the meantime, Thailand is in a messy political situation and has lost control of the situation.

When we arrived, on March 8th, there were stations at the airport doing temperature checks. Immediately quarantining anyone with a fever. They also collected extra info on all arrivals for contact tracing.

Majority (~ 80%) of locals were taking it seriously and were wearing masks voluntarily. And they were really adamant about us wearing masks. Our condo had free masks and sanitizer in the lobby.

They were also doing home visits of people who have arrived starting from March 8th. But we didn’t get a visit. I’m guessing they were working backwards and just never made it to these earlier arrivals.

Overall I’m very impressed with the way Vietnam handled the situation.

But at the same time, I can’t believe these numbers. I have no concrete evidence, but just feels too low.

There was A LOT of contact. Many businesses continued operating. I know of a software office that continued asking people to come into the office and the last week, when permission was given to work from home. Construction was in full force. Most didn’t wear any masks. Many other businesses remained operating and didn’t shutdown.

My prediction is if more cities around North America did post-mortem Covid tests of people who passed away in February, there's a good chance we'd find some deceased actually had Covid-19 similar to what California revealed earlier last week. Because of those findings, some researchers are now thinking community spread in places like the Bay Area may have started as early as January.

I say this because reading this article, they mention that Vietnam quarantined an entire district in Hanoi back in February when the entire country only had 10 cases at that point in time. They also banned travel from and to mainland China in early February. Those measures done early may have saved them from tens of thousands of infections. Vietnam has essentially relied on aggressive contact tracing coupled with strict lockdowns/quarantining.

Here in Canada, we brushed off suggestions of forced quarantines of incoming travelers or banning flights to/from Mainland China. We solely relied on travelers telling authorities if they experienced symptoms, which bit us in the tail when March came along and hundreds of new cases were popped up by the day.

We didn't reverse our stance on restrictive measures till the virus had gotten out of a control. Even now as the growth rate has flattened, we're still dealing with the fallout in long term care facilities as hundreds of elderly people have passed away due to caregivers/visitors unknowingly infecting them. That coupled with the growth of the virus in the homeless community has made it very challenging to sustainably contain the virus.

I think what frustrates me is that we knew we had weaknesses in our system, yet we decided to go with the non-proactive solution anyway. Even recently we didn't bother with random testing asymptomatic caregivers until after hundreds of people died. It's a lot harder to undo the damage than it is to be overly pre-cautious and prevent the worst case scenario from happening in the first place.

From a westerner living in Vietnam:

There are many things that haven't been mentioned here yet.

Vietnamese schools haven't reopened since Tet, end of January.

The population distribution is skewed towards the young end.

Most cases were imported, by youngish people, and the average age of these is even younger, mostly students, or for business or for holidays. Mostly relatively rich and young, not many travelling pensioneers in this country.

Mentioned measures contained community spread from said travellers to the rest.

The very old in Vietnam are not in care houses, they are at home, cared for by their extended family, who is much more likely to give a damn.

Information from the government news agency has been rather transparent, or so it seems to me. Every case has a number, and case numbers of contacts of new cases are reported. If unknown this is also reported.

This appearance of transparency and the fact that everyone infected is receiving prompt free treatment encouraged people to report suspect cases rather than hiding.

The government carries as a badge of honor that there haven't been any fatalities yet. The few critical cases are getting extreme medical treatment, no resources are being spared, there are so few that they can afford to do this. Multiple nurses, doctors and equipment per ICU patient. It seems to me that they will do whatever it takes to prevent fatalities. One of the critical cases is an european pilot. If he died it would be impossible for the government to hide.

Facemasks are plentiful, I have shipped many to friends and relatives in my country, where they are scarce and expensive. Hand sanitizer is everywhere.

It seems that heat doesn't stop the spread after all, but if it slows it down, that might also have helped, this is a tropical country, though in the north, and in the mountains, it can get quite chilly in winter.

I feel lucky being here now, but, of course, it's too early to call, I won't know for sure until this is over.

Along with Taiwan, Vietnam is also another country that dealt with and learned from SARS in 2002/03.

> Vietnam has become one of the first few countries in the world to emerge successfully from the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak

It's even more impressive: they emerged successfully not just from the first wave (direct from China, with which they share a long land border), but the second wave as well (travelers from Europe, US, Iran etc). Quite a few countries, notably Singapore, rode the first wave well but stumbled on the second.

"They were also one of the first few countries to ban return flights to and from mainland China, having announced the suspension from Feb. 1, 2020, slightly more than a week after the country's first cases of Covid-19 were found."

How much of their reported success in containing the virus was due to this, and how much was due to the lockdown? Other countries which have fared relatively well (e.g. NZ, Australia) also closed their borders early.

Nicaragua supposedly only has 13 cases of Covid and they never implemented ANY precautions. Their president was also missing for more than 30 days, just showed up a couple of days ago finally.

Vietnam is doing more to halt COVID-19 than most countries on Earth. people that are there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cme4vNcqFFs

Vietnam is not a magical place. It lies some where at the bottom of the pile in the press freedom index next to China.

So god knows how many people where silenced, jailed or killed. Wait for a few years for the full story to emerge.

Maybe because they don't get extra money for labeling a patient as a COVID patient:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fac...

The same way Thailand has only 52 deaths, the blokes here could have explosive diarrhea and still won't consider washing their hands (granted the woman are the polar opposite - washing their hands continually - scared to death of it) and with mass exodus from the cities when hospitality went belly up the other month there is no way it isn't everywhere in SE asia non-city towns and villages. Whereas Singapore is fucked and they have western approaches to hygiene, a bit odd that wouldn't you say. Ineffective testing, or ineffective tests, head in sand, photoshots for the big boys, hospital directors worried about their livelyhood etc..

All cynism aside I do think SE Asia has fared better than Europe, but the reasons won't be worthy of someone getting an award (although no doubt their will be award like ceremonies for years to come) - the temperature theory is rebounding now etc..

I'd love to see an antibody study in Vietnam. I have a theory that with a low enough viral load, most people won't be symptomatic. If you can infect someone with a single copy of the virus, they won't notice. You cough directly in their face and the constant factor starts from that virus population and your immune system doesn't have a chance to catch up.

This is why healthy medical staff die and the prison population tests positive for antibodies but didn't show symptoms.

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To be clear, I am not advocating for an unethical study, but that infection rates in Vietnam are much higher than their case count would indicate.

This conversation is rather prescient as the death toll in the US due to covid will most likely surpass the total US combat deaths of the Vietnam War tomorrow.

I follow a professor in Vietnam on twitter; he was pointing out last month that hydroxychloroquine is an over-the-counter drug there and is commonly used to treat malaria. They're probably not going to wait until you're most of the way dead before administering it the way the "We Must Have A Study" bureaucrats will here. I suspect this also apples to the rest of Indochina.

a few things they did:

> On April 15, Vietnam's "fake news" laws went into effect, which was introduced to address the spread of misinformation about Covid-19 over social media in the country.

> A fine of VND10-20 million (S$605-S$1,210) was to be imposed on people who make use of social media to share "false, untruthful, distorted or slanderous information"

> Security officials or Communist Party spies can be found on every street and crossing in every neighborhood and in every village

maybe they just didn't have super spreading situations? what if it was luck?

In short: They didn't. That are only the measured numbers and they depend on how well you measure.

Kind of pointless without knowing how many people were tested

North Korea is doing even better.

Clearly it's weather.

I'm not sure how much more evidence we need.

Yes they are lying a bit. Yes they have done great work. But these aren't enough to see what we are seeing.

And all the counties going into winter are going to be crying in a few months no one warned them, or it was somehow unexpected.