HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam approved its first COVID-19 vaccine and halted an important meeting of the ruling Communist Party, state media reported Saturday, as the country fought its biggest coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic began.
Vietnam, a country of about 98 million people that has been very successful in fighting the virus so far, has registered 180 new cases since two locally transmitted cases were reported in northern Hai Duong province on Thursday.
That’s a rapid spread, as Vietnam has recorded just 1,739 cases and 35 deaths since the disease was first discovered a year ago, including 873 locally transmitted infections, thanks to mass testing 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 contain the outbreak by Feb. 6, ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.
According to the government statement, 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 chief of the coronavirus task force had previously advocated a plan to prepare for a scenario of 30,000 cases.
Vietnam shut down two remote districts in the coffee-growing province of Gia Lai in the Central Highlands on Saturday after at least five people there tested positive for the virus, the government said.
“The disease has spread to the community, the variant is dangerous and is spreading very quickly,” said a statement, adding that all cases in Gia Lai were related to the Hai Duong epicenter.
Authorities rushed to test thousands of people when authorities confirmed the outbreak had spread to Hanoi, where the ruling party holds its five-yearly convention to elect a new leadership.
State media reported that the convention would end Monday, a day ahead of schedule. The reports did not say why, and were later removed from the websites of official state news outlets.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Health approved a vaccine from AstraZeneca PLC for domestic vaccinations after Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said late Friday that the country should have a vaccine in the first quarter.
The government had previously 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 discovered, also said it would separately attempt to secure 2 million doses of vaccine for its population.
The majority of new cases have been recorded in Hai Duong, where 2,340 factory workers have been isolated after an employee came into contact with a person who tested positive for the more contagious B.1.1.7 British variant of the disease upon arrival in Japan in mid-January.
Reporting by James Pearson, Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen; Written by James Pearson; Editing by Angus MacSwan