Da Nang People's Committee Vice Chairman Ngo Thi Kim Yen urged the health agency and authorities at local level to take proactive measures to prepare for a potential sudden increase in the spread of the coronavirus in order to provide effective treatment for COVID-19 patients during her meeting with members of the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control held late afternoon on Friday, January 6.

Mrs Yen expressed great concern about a possible sharp rise in cases in the coming time, especially after the Lunar New Year, thereby stressing the need to build scenarios in preparation for the city’s daily case count hitting between 2,500 and 3,000.

Healthcare facilities across the city were asked to prepare themselves for future surges in hospitalizations. In addition, attention must be given to maximizing available resources to effectively implement the city’s pilot programme for mildly ill COVID-19 patients to recover at home.

The health agency was tasked to work with the municipal Department of Information and Communications to give widespread publicity of home quarantine guidance to patients with mild symptoms, especially ways how to manage waste originating from COVID-19 patients and how to prevent infection and cross-infection in their home.

According to the municipal Department of Health, Da Nang now has 5 dedicated COVID-19 healthcare facilities that together provide 4,150 beds for COVID-19 patients, including 270 intensive care unit (ICU) beds for critically ill patients.

To streamline the treatment of Covid-19 patients, the Da Nang government has set up three types of facilities for various categories of COVID-19 cases in line with the Ministry of Health’s guidelines. The government has established Care Centres where mild or very mild cases will be admitted. The second category will be Dedicated COVID-19 Health Centres. These shall offer care for all cases that have been clinically assigned as moderate. The third category will be Dedicated Covid Hospital which shall offer comprehensive care primarily for those clinically assigned as severe.

The health sector has organized training courses involved in the COVID-19 treatment and management for 7,258 healthcare workers while 247 others have been trained on how to care for critically ill COVID-19 patients. In addition, 280 staff members of mobile medical stations have been provided with essential professional skills to assist mildly ill COVID-19 patients to recover at home.

Currently, 2 mobile medical stations have been set up in each commune and ward of the city, and each of them will take responsibility for caring between 50 and 100 COVID-19 patients who are under home recovery. Da Nang is one of the Vietnamese localities that use the antiviral Lagevrio (Molnupiravir) to treat people with mild to moderate COVID-19 who are at increased risk of developing severe disease in line with recommendations of the Ministry of Health. Molnupiravir has been authorised for use in people who have mild to moderate COVID-19. Lagevrio was found to be effective in reducing the risk of hospitalisation or death for at-risk non-hospitalised adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 by 50%.

Till date, more than 3,500 patients in Da Nang have received molnupiravir, of whom, over 2,892 have been reported significant improvement of clinical symptoms. According to the municipal Department of Health, there are remaining over 184,000 antiviral pills that are enough to treat 5,000 to treat people with mild to moderate COVID-19 with their expiration date of June 2023. Da Nang has already asked for the allocation of an additional 200,000 COIVID-19 pills from the Ministry of Health to prepare for possible prolonged and widespread outbreak of the COVID-19 virus.

Reporting by PHAN CHUNG – Translating by H.L