Da Nang People's Committee Vice Chairwoman Ngo Thi Kim Yen on Monday urged authorities at local level to keep up with the situation and to have a good assessment of what is happening in order to enable appropriate measures to be taken to effectively control the spread of the virus during her meeting with members of the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control.

Vice Chairwoman Ngo Thi Kim Yen delivered her instructions at Monday’s meeting of the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control. Photo: LE HUNG

Mrs Yen stated that new coronavirus cases are rising across the city, and the majority of which are asymptomatic and are under home-based isolation and care while moderate risk patients are being treated for COVID-19 at local healthcare facilities. Therefore, she directed the health agency to maximize available resources to provide effective treatment for infected patients.  

Vice Chairwoman stressed the need for the health agency to send more healthcare workers from district-level medical facilities to the field hospital to support its efforts in treating hospitalized COVID-patients. She also highlighted the importance of building an effective network of doctors and nurses from ward and communal level medical stations in managing COVID-19 patients under home-based isolation and care in an attempt to help them make a full recovery from the illness.

The health agency was tasked to provide guidance for authorities at local level to flexibly buy medical supplies to support their efforts in the fight against COVID-19. The agency was asked to give advice to the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on how to deal with potential rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19.

Mrs Yen urged the health agency to accelerate the city’s COVID-19 booster vaccination programme in order to hit the city’s target to complete the delivery of the top-up jab to those aged 18 and over in March 2022.

The Department of Education and Training has given advice to the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on plan for how education will be delivered in March 2022 based on predictions of COVID-19 from the health agency.

Mrs Le Thi Bich Thuan, the Director of the municipal Department of Education and Training pointed out the fact that primary and preschools witnessed a low number of students who have returned to in-person learning, and these schools also saw a continuation in the trend of a decreasing number of students who are attending class amid the complicated development of the pandemic. Currently, there have been large numbers of students and teachers who have tested positive for COVID-19 that have forced some schools to conduct both online and face-to-face education to keep quarantined students learning.

Mrs Thuan remarked that preschools in Da Nang will remain open for in-person learning under an adapted model but the education sector will collect opinions of parents of kids to decide appropriate education at these schools in times of COVID-19.

Reporting by LE HUNG – translating by H.L