Da Nang boasts enough capacity and conditions to completely put the fourth wave of COVID-19 under control, affirmed municipal Party Committee Secretary Nguyen Van Quang, the city’ top leader, at a meeting held by the Da Nang Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on Thursday afternoon.

Da Nang Party Committee Secretary Nguyen Van Quang (left) addressed a meeting on Thursday held by the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control. Photo: PHAN CHUNG

Da Nang registered ten locally transmitted cases on May 13, thus bringing the city’s total cases to 112 since May 3 when the first community infection was reported, said the latest report released by the municipal Department of Health.

COVID-19 testing conduced in a prompt yet highly effective manner

According to latest report released by the municipal People’s Committee Office, on Thursday, functional local forces collected swab samples for COVID-19 testing from 21,920 people across the city, the first-ever highest count recorded in a single day, thus bringing the total number of samples taken so far to more than 75,400.

Many districts have stepped up collecting specimens, namely Son Tra with the collection of 9,000 samples, Thanh Khe with about 3,000, Lien Chieu with 2,300 and Hoa Vang with 2,000.

Secretary Quang highly lauded functional bodies for having conducted the collection of such an impressive swab collection amount in a short time, especially, at high-risk settings, most recently the An Don Industrial Park (IP).

“The faster the number of samples is taken for testing, the sooner we can take virus response measures to curb the spread”, affirmed the city Party chief.

Meanwhile, municipal People’s Committee Chairman Le Trung Chinh asked the Da Nang Centre for Disease Control (CDC Da Nang) and other relevant agencies to draw up COVID-19 prevention and control plans at the Tien Sa Port and its surroundings.

The local healthcare sector must urgently scale up its testing programme to eliminate risks of infection. In addition, another task is to detect and impose heavy penalties on those who flout the national and municipal governments-mandated COVID-19 prevention and control rules, demanded Chairman Chinh.

Preventing cross-contamination, strict handling of violations

Doctor Ton That Thanh, the Director of the Da Nang CDC, affirmed that all-level authorities have strived to ensure that no close contacts are missed by contact tracers and not told to self-isolate. However, the threat of cross-infection inside centralised quarantine establishments is still looming large.

In fact, some close contacts of infectious cases put under quarantine may become infected in the hours or days after testing negative for the virus once.

For more explanations, after infiltrating a person’s body, the virus can take several days to build up, and in the meantime, there may not be enough virus for a test to detect it. But the person could still be infected or contagious in the interim. A person who tests negative one day might turn positive just a day later, or even an hour later. People can spread the virus in the days before they first start feeling ill, and can also spread the virus even if they never develop symptoms.

“CDC Da Nang, therefore, highly recommends functional forces to tighten their management and control of quarantine activities in a strict manner in a bid to avoid any cross-infection cases”, said doctor Thanh.

As of May 13, 37 medical quarantine facilities have been set up across the city, accommodating a combined total of more than 1,500 close contacts of COVID-19 cases.

In parallel with the publicity of mandatory COVID-19 prevention rules, law enforcement forces have resolutely imposed administrative penalties on violations.

On May 13, 16 violation cases were fined a total amount of VND 26 million.

Since May 5, VND 364.1 million in fines has been levied on 183 violation cases across the city, mainly not wearing masks in public, large gatherings and offering table services to dinners.

Reporting by PHAN CHUNG – Translating by A.T