16 to 19 bursary

In a virtual meeting Thursday with Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long, his Lao counterpart Bounfeng Phoummalaysith said the pandemic has dramatically erupted in his country since April 20, spreading to 15 of 18 provinces.

The number of new cases in Laos has been steadily increasing, with a peak of 100 in a day. Epidemiological investigations show that the new infections are closely connections to illegal entrants.

In the Lao capital of Vientiane, central hospitals are full of patients, requiring field medical facilities to be mobilized to treat Covid-19 patients. The country has not recorded any death from the pandemic so far.

Laos needs 10 Realtime RT-PCR machines with a capacity of 40,000 samples a day, said Phoummalaysith, expressing his hope for Vietnam’s assistance with equipment, supplies and treatment.

“Laos wishes to have Vietnam’s help with experts for testing and sharing other lessons,” he said.

Long said Vietnam will provide Laos with 200 ventilators, two million masks, 10 tonnes of chloroquine and other equipment. Vietnamese experts will also go to Laos and help build test systems, field hospitals, especially intensive care units (ICUs) for severe cases. Vietnamese experts will support Lao colleagues in treating patients via telehealth systems, that are to be established at treatment facilities in Laos.

Long told Phoummalaysith that Vietnam has been carrying out all preventive activities with the motto of getting things done “in the quickest time possible” to contain the pandemic, particularly in cutting community transmissions. The country has been vigorously and thoroughly tracing people who’d had contact with positive cases, he said.

Vietnam has also been applying the combining sample strategy, which has a range of 5 – 16 samples depending on different areas.

“It helps to rapidly increase the testing capacity amid the lack of testing resources. The most prominent example is the third wave in the northern province of Hai Duong in February,” he said, adding that the country has conducted two million tests so far.

Long said Vietnam has been asking people who have close contact with infected ones (F1) to go to quarantine centers to take pathogens out of the community, cutting off the transmission.

Patients with severe illness are treated at hospitals equipped with emergency resuscitation systems, cases without symptoms or having mild ones are treated at field hospitals, he explained.

Vietnam has also established remote medical examination and treatment systems connecting with facilities for Covid-19 patients. The country has 1,500 locations connected nationwide, allowing any case to get timely treatment with support of leading experts.

With serious cases, Vietnam conducts systematic consultations to find the most effective treatments. Therefore, during the third Covid-19 wave, the country had a high number of infections but no deaths.

Singapore has detected a COVID-19 cluster in one its largest hospitals, among 16 new locally transmitted infections that were reported on Thursday, its highest number of domestic cases in seven months.

Singapore has managed to contain its coronavirus outbreaks since a big contagion among migrant workers in dormitories last year. Most of its subsequent cases have been imported and found in quarantine.

Eight of the cases announced late Thursday were linked to Tan Tock Seng Hospital, the health ministry said. The hospital’s cases include a doctor and a nurse who were vaccinated for the coronavirus. Both had symptoms.

Authorities have isolated two wards in the hospital to test staff and patients, and increased quarantine and movement curbs after the cluster, which is the first in a Singapore hospital.

Seven other local cases on Thursday were linked to an airport immigration officer.

The city-state has reported more than 61,000 cases since the pandemic hit last year, the vast majority of those in dormitories housing low-wage foreign workers. It has recorded 30 deaths in total.

The new cases comes as Singapore readies a travel bubble with Hong Kong that is set to launch in May after a suspension last year.

Singapore has been rolling out vaccinations having approved shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna.

The health ministry said the vaccines are effective in preventing symptomatic disease for the vast majority of recipients, but some can still be infected despite being inoculated.

Concerns have been growing over new variants of the virus and the effectiveness of existing vaccines.

India posted a record daily rise of 401,993 new coronavirus cases on Saturday as the country opened up its massive vaccination drive to all adults, although several states warned of acute shortages.

It was the first time India’s daily case count had topped 400,000 after 10 consecutive days over 300,000.

Deaths from COVID-19 jumped by 3,523 over the past 24 hours, taking the total toll in India to 211,853, according to official data.

The world’s biggest producer of COVID-19 vaccines has a limited number of shots available, worsening a grim second wave of infections that has overwhelmed hospitals and morgues while families scramble for scarce medicines and oxygen.

Hundreds of people were seen queuing to be vaccinated across Ahmedabad, the main commercial city in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, on Saturday.

The chief minister of the hard-hit state of Delhi on Friday implored people not to queue at vaccination centres, promising more vaccines would arrive “tomorrow or the day after”.

India’s eastern Odisha state said on Friday it had received a consignment of 150,000 shots but would only allow a few people to get shots due to lockdown restrictions preventing movement.

A fire in a hospital about 190 km (115 miles) south of Ahmedabad killed 16 coronavirus patients and two staff, the latest in a series of deadly accidents at hospitals.

Modi offered his condolences to the families of the hospital fire victims on Twitter, hours after he posted pictures of himself praying at a Sikh temple in capital New Delhi.

Some experts blame mass religious gatherings and political rallies for the severity of India’s second wave, which caught the government unprepared.

A forum of scientific advisers set up by Modi administration warned Indian officials in early March of a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus taking hold in the country, five scientists who are part of the forum told Reuters .

Despite the warning, four of the scientists said the federal government did not seek to impose major restrictions to contain the spread of the virus.

Millions, largely unmasked, attended religious gatherings and election rallies that were held by Modi, leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition politicians.

The total number of COVID cases in India has topped 19 million.

As the second wave has picked up steam, India has added about 7.7 million cases since the end of February, according to a Reuters tally.

In contrast, it took India nearly six months to add the previous 7.7 million cases.

The surge in cases led U.S. President Joe Biden to impose new travel restrictions on India on Friday, barring most non-U.S. citizens from entering the United States.

Australian officials said residents and citizens who have been in India within 14 days of the date they plan to return home will be banned from entering Australia as of Monday, and those who disobey will face fines and jail. read more

Other countries and territories have also imposed similar travel restrictions on India, including Britain, Germany, Italy and Singapore, while Canada, Hong Kong and New Zealand have suspended all commercial travel with India.

Patients 2940-2942 are related to “patient 2899” in the northern province of Ha Nam. The three new patients are being treated at the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases 2 in Hanoi.

Patients 2929-2939 are Vietnamese returned from Japan, UAE, Canada and Romania. They were quarantined upon arrival and are being treated at different hospitals.

Vietnam has recorded 16 new local cases since Thursday. Most of the new cases are linked to patient 2899, who tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Ha Nam after completing his mandated two-week quarantine in Da Nang where he tested negative three times.

Nearly 510,000 people have been vaccinated as of Saturday.

Vietnam has recorded 2,942 Covid-19 cases to date, including 2,549 recoveries and 35 deaths.