Amid the practice of the ‘stay-at-home’ mandate, one of the unprecedented curbs Da Nang took to stamp out COVID-19 transmission, the Da Nang healthcare sector, in coordination with other relevant local agencies, has focused on speeding up tracking, contact tracing, isolating and testing with the highest determination level and great efforts in a bid to pick as many positive cases as possible out of the community. This approach helped timely and accurately assess the level of disease risk in each area whereby the municipal administration can decide on appropriate pandemic prevention and control measures.

The Da Nang Centre for Disease Control staff have always raced against time to have test a huge amount of samples during the ‘stay-at-home’ period. Photo: LE HUNG, Graphics: TUYET ANH

Speeding up large-area sampling

In order for the testing to be most highly effective, the Da Nang administration requested functional forces to make a correct and sufficient list of target subjects, with wide coverage. Simultaneously, the healthcare sector carried out sampling for COVID-19 testing according to the plan on schedule, hereby avoiding duplication and omission of household representatives during the ‘One door- one test’ approach.

Starting from August 16, all local household representatives in residential groups, in a simultaneous manner, had their nasal swab samples collected for COVID-19 testing every 3 days with strict safety measures against the deadly virus put in place during the sampling.

Doctor Ton That Thanh, the Drector of the Da Nang Centre for Disease Control (CDC), said, “Local medical staff had almost no time to rest. During the peak, as many as 130,000 people citywide were subject to the sampling for COVID-19 testing, a record number logged so far in Da Nang. A total of 9 testing labs across the city were mobilised to handle such a huge sample amount. In fact, the faster testing for the virus is conducted, the sooner response measures are taken to curb the further spread”.

According to CDC Da Nang, from July 31, when Directive 05/CT-UBND  came into force, the average daily number of tested samples processed was 48,626. From August 16, when the ‘stay-at-home’ mandate began, this figure went up to 104,786.

Through 7 rounds of the ‘One door- one test’ approach applied to all local household representatives, 277 positive cases were recorded in the community and a large number of their primary and secondary contacts were put under quarantine to curb the virus spread. 

As accumulated, in just one month, the city recorded more than 2,700 cases of COVID-19.  Without strict social distancing and large -scale testing, these 2,700 cases would have resulted in more spread, putting the city's infection risk is at an alarming level.

In parallel with stamping out infection clusters within Da Nang, local functional forces are speeding up the conduction of rapid antigen tests for all people entering the city via checkpoints set up at the city’s gateways in a great effort to detect and prevent more infections from penetrating into the city.

Rapid antigen tests have been carried out on all arrivals in Da Nang who are all drivers, their assistants and other road users right at its gateways. Simply put, arrivals are allowed to enter Da Nang only after receiving negative test results. Such a rapid antigen test can provide results in 20 - 30 minutes.

A positive test result announced at the checkpoints must be then transferred to an eligible medical centre for a final confirmation through another test via the real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique.

During the ‘stay-at-home’ period, though the practice of rapid antigen testing on arrivals, 9 positive cases were logged, and all of them were arrivals from other pandemic-stricken localities nationwide.

According to Vice Chairman of the Da Nang People's Committee Ngo Thi Kim Yen, on average, each phase, the local healthcare staff had to take nasal swab samples for COVID-19 testing from 350,000 - 370,000 people. This placed a huge work pressure to this frontline force.

Staffers involved in the sampling, testing and data analysis missions had almost no days off and had to work continuously during the daytime and nighttime, even during odd hours. Regardless of heavy workload and hardships, all of them have always pulled out all the stops to fulfill their assigned tasks in a prompt yet effective manners.

Given great efforts, on September 18, after 70 days, for the first time, the city did not detect any community transmission case.

Fast tracking conducted in industrial parks

One of the factors that helps Da Nang to quickly stamp out COVID-19 transmission in industrial parks (IPs) is the conduction of widespread testing, rapid tracing and isolation.

Looking back to a previous outbreak detected at the Truong Minh Trading and Service Co., Ltd, located on Road No. 2, Son Tra District-located Da Nang IP, tests were conducted on about 12,000 people related to this park in just 24 hours.

Likewise, in mid-July 2021, when a worker of Murata Manufacturing Viet Nam company (also known as Viet Hoa Electronics Co., Ltd.) in the Hoa Khanh IP, Hoa Khanh Bac Ward, Lien Chieu District) was confirmed to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, the IP’s Authority immediately coordinated with the Lien Chieu District Medical Centre and the Da Nang CDC to organize on-site isolation and take samples for testing from 1,700 contacts in the park.

Immediately afterwards, the functional forces continued to quickly conducting tests for more than 3,000 workers in the Viet Hoa Electronics Co., Ltd to ensure that no close contacts are missed by contact tracers and not told to self-isolate.

Reporting by P.CHUNG, L. HUNG, N. PHU – Translating by ANH THU