Six more imported covid 19 patients confirmed on friday

Cambodia was suffering a significant surge in Covid-19 community transmissions. On Tuesday, the country reported 181 new infections. Three days earlier, there were more than 1,000 cases.

Tran Dac Phu, senior advisor to the Health Ministry’s public health emergency operations center, told VnExpress Tuesday that “the border between Vietnam and Cambodia is really long, not to mention the sea and air routes. It should be noted that controlling travel by sea is truly difficult.”

Many Vietnamese people stay and do business in Cambodia and the number of people traveling back and forth, both legally and illegally, is high, he said.

“The infection risk is high and it is essential that we tighten control over border gates and all small paths that people use to enter Vietnam. It is possible that community outbreaks could re-emerge in the country if someone sneaks in illegally with the virus,” he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) in Cambodia has recently warned of the risk Cambodia is facing.

“We stand on the brink of a national tragedy because of Covid-19. Despite our best efforts… new cases occur every day and we are racing against the virus. Unless we can stop the outbreak, Cambodia’s health system is at high risk of being overwhelmed, which would have disastrous consequences,” said WHO Representative to Cambodia, Li Ailan.

Just last month, Vietnam had suffered a spate of infections after a group of Vietnamese returned home illegally via the sea route .

Three of them, all women 25 and 26 years old, were confirmed infected after they returned from Cambodia on a fishing vessel that docked at Phu Quoc Island off the nation’s southern coast.

Last December, a man had tested positive after entering Vietnam illegally . He traveled from Myanmar to Thailand by truck and then got into Cambodia on another truck before sneaking into the south of the country. Fortunately, his mother reported him and thanks to her, the infection chain was stopped just in time. Three of the eight people crossing the border with him were also infected.

As per Vietnam’s protocols, all people entering the nation from abroad must be quarantined for 14 days, during which they will be tested at least twice.

Illegal entrants are those evading checkpoints to avoid quarantine.

Phu called on the nation’s citizens to proactively report to authorities if they come to learn of any person sneaking into the country illegally.

For around three weeks now, Vietnam has not recorded any community transmission but the number of imported cases has been increasing gradually, with many of them returnees from Cambodia.

So far, 1,570 of Vietnam’s 2,714 Covid-29 cases have been local transmissions.

Vietnam has inoculated around 60,000 citizens against Covid-19 with the vaccine produced by British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca, obtained either through contracts or global vaccine access mechanism Covax. Most of the vaccinated people so far are frontline workers in the Covid-19 fight.

The nation is expected to start mass production of indigenously produced Nanocovax vaccine in August if a three-phase human trial is successfully completed in May.

The COVID-19 crisis is pushing poor countries and the poor in general deeper into difficulty. At the recent G20’s Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, representatives from Mexico and Argentina said that middle-income countries are being forgotten, even though this group accounts for 75% of the world’s population, while 62% of the citizens of these are living in poverty. Meanwhile, the conference quoted the World Bank (WB) estimate pointing out that the COVID-19 pandemic has created an additional 120 million extremely poor people globally, mostly in middle-income countries.

In this context, Mexico and Argentina have called on international creditors to reschedule debts owed by middle-income countries, while at the same time putting them in the designated group to benefit from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s US$650 billion special assistance scheme. The two G20 members also proposed the creation of an international fund to support debt restructuring for middle-income countries, helping prevent health and financial crises from turning into debt crises in the medium term.

The above proposals have been made in the context of the “COVID-19 storm” severely devastating the economies of poor and developing countries. However, statistics show that so far, only 46 (out of 73 eligible countries) have requested and got approval for a postponement regarding the repayment of debts totalling about US$5.7 billion.

To support poor countries in escaping the post-pandemic economic crisis, the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors agreed to delay the repayment of public debt interest from the poorest countries. At the same time, the “G20 family” also supported the IMF’s plan to raise reserves to help poor countries and pledged to reach agreement on global tax reform by mid-2021.

Besides the request for assistance to poor countries designed to rejuvenate their economies, international financial institutions such as the IMF and WB are focusing on supporting poor and developing countries so they do not give up on the fight against climate change.

At the spring meetings of the WB and IMF last week, the two proposed the idea of a “debt swap” for green projects. Accordingly, the IMF’s managing director said that low-income countries are facing a double crisis – under pressure to repay debts and facing environmental problems, making them highly vulnerable. So by easing the debt burden of governments, financial institutions and creditors can help provide poor countries with a chance to invest in green projects for recovery. This will be an important factor bringing the world into a more sustainable development period post-COVID-19.

It is expected that details on the so-called “green debt swaps” will be announced at the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, scheduled for the end of 2021 in the UK. Increasing spending in order to boost the world economy and help poor countries rejuvenate their economies, fight climate change, and ensure “no one is left behind” was also the message emphasised by the US Treasury Secretary at the recent spring meetings of the WB and IMF.

The world is experiencing the COVID-19 crisis, but thanks to active anti-epidemic campaigns and vaccines, the health of the global economy is recovering. In the newly released World Economic Outlook Update, the IMF raised its forecast for world economic growth this year to 6%, instead of 5.5% in January. However, the big problem now is an uneven recovery amongst countries.

This requires the international community, especially rich countries and major financial institutions, to make efforts to implement the “post-COVID-19 dual goals” – both to help poor countries in their economic recovery, while ensuring they join hands in the fight against climate change.