In the time to come, the Da Nang authorities must highly concentrate on speeding up the contact-tracing of all at-risk cases in a methodical and in-depth manner, especially not miss out any close contacts of COVID-19 patients in the community. Also, it is a must-do to impose strictest penalties on any untruthful declarations on travel and contact history. In particular, the municipal government has completely refuted a deeply- concerning, false rumour on the lockdown of the entire city going viral in recent days.

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

The above-mentioned instructions were released by Da Nang Party Committee Secretary Nguyen Van Quang at a meeting on Monday held by the municipal Steering Board for COVID-19 Prevention and Control.

According to a report by the municipal Department of Health, Da Nang registered four locally transmitted cases on May 10, thus bringing the city’s total count to 53 since May 3 when the first community infection was reported.

On the same day, the local healthcare sector successfully traced more than 440 close contacts of COVID-19 patients and labelled nine local residential settings as the so-called “self-quarantine zones”.

Local medical staff collected a throat and nose swab of more than 10,935 people living in high-risk settings for COVID-19 testing.

For the time being, the acceleration of zoning, contact-tracking, sampling and testing on those living at at-risk locations, along with under-treatment patients and their family members, and healthcare workers, is still on track.

Strictly dealing with untruthful declarations on travel and contact history

Addressing the Monday meeting, Secretary Quang demanded that the local authorities use professional methods to thoroughly conduct epidemiological investigations as soon as possible so as to complete the travel and contact history of COVID-19 catching persons in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.

In fact, COVID-19 infected people and their close contacts that “beat around the bush” or even make false declarations about their travel history, hindering virus containment missions, must be strictly handled.

With regard to a recent false rumour on citywide lockdown order, the city’s top leader asked functional local agencies to strictly handle such a case in which some people have made use of the complicated COVID-19 pandemic to spread untruthful information on social media to generate likes, views and shares without worrying about the consequences of their harmful actions.

A foreign man residing at the sealed off FHome apartment building has his nose swab taken for SARS-CoV-2 testing on May 9. Photo: XUAN DUNG

Proposing solutions for quarantining and conducting COVID-19 tests on at-risk cases

Delivering his instructions at the meeting, municipal People's Committee Chairman Le Trung Chinh suggested that all functional local bodies continue promoting the drastic spirit of consistently implementing synchronous effective solutions.

At present, the number of the close contacts of recently-confirmed COVID-19 patients is on rise, putting higher pressure on the city in terms of putting in place compulsory quarantine measures. 

“The local authorities are requested to draw up specific and clear plans to safely separate the close contacts of the COVID-19 cases from those who are not infected with the virus in a bid to prevent any potential cross-contamination inside centralised quarantine facilities across the city”, said the municipal government chief.

The municipal Department of Health has released a list of places previously visited by COVID-19 patients while they were infectious, a move in service for contact-tracing tasks to prevent the virus transmission.

In particular, the local authorities also issued an urgent notice that requests all attendees of a wedding party at the Phi Lu No. 3 Restaurant, September 2 Street, Hai Chau District at 5:30pm on May 1 to quickly contact their nearest medical facilities for assistance.

This restaurant is linked to one of the four COVID-19 cases confirmed on May 10, said doctor Nguyen Tien Hong, the Deputy Director of the municipal Department of Health.

Reporting by PHAN CHUNG- Translating by A.T