Ministry rejects declaration on end of coronavirus pandemic

After the Covid-19 epidemic is gradually controlled, residents and producers have already returned to normal pre-Covid-19 life, many health experts have therefore proposed declaring an end to the epidemic, bringing the pandemic out of the group A infectious disease group. However, the Ministry of Health rejected the proposal.

 

Ministry rejects declaration on end of coronavirus pandemic ảnh 1 People still don facemasks in public places to prevent Covid-19
According to the Ministry of Health, in theory, only the World Health Organization (WHO) has the authority to declare an end to the pandemic; moreover, Vietnam also does not benefit from the declaration of the end of the epidemic.
Presently, the WHO is still warning that Covid-19 is a global pandemic and recommends maintaining response measures, especially vaccination. Experts from the WHO announced that the number of new cases of Covid-19 has kept increasing with complicated developments.
Moreover, the presence of the Omicron variant and its sub-variants also makes the risk of Covid-19 infection higher.
Regarding the Covid-19 epidemic in Vietnam, the number of daily new cases has decreased over the past week with about 500 cases per day; some days even have had less than 200 cases while the country reported zero or one death a day. However, currently, the rate of adults receiving third and fourth doses of vaccine and children in many provinces and cities is still low.
Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Lien Huong said that although the number of cases and deaths from Covid-19 is under control, the pandemic is highly likely to re-occur causing an overload for health facilities and a bad impact on people’s lives and the country’s social-economic growth. Therefore, the Ministry of Health continues to classify Covid-19 as a group A infectious disease.
Along with that, if the country declares an end to the pandemic, people may ignore preventative measures.
The Ministry of Health has not yet considered Covid-19 as an endemic disease because the endemic disease is the steady occurrence of a disease or causative agent in a certain geographical area or population group. While with the Covid-19 epidemic, most countries have an unstable number of cases and deaths, the up and down trend changes when new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus appear.
SARS-CoV-2 new variants are constantly appearing whereas herd immunity has not been stable for a long time, so the disease can break out again at any time. Currently, no country in the world has declared Covid-19 as an endemic disease, but only many countries have gradually eased epidemic prevention and control measures on the basis of a high rate of Covid-19 vaccine coverage.
Associate Professor Do Van Dung, Dean of the Faculty of Public Health of Ho Chi Minh City-based University of Medicine and Pharmacy said that declaring the end of the Covid-19 epidemic would not bring any additional benefits but could cause some difficulties.
According to him, if Vietnam now announces the end of the Covid-19 epidemic, it will cause concern to the world community, going against the common efforts of countries, especially in the context that many countries are making efforts to prevent the epidemic. Meanwhile, the WHO still wants countries to continue to prevent the epidemic.

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