Head of the Office of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health Nguyen Thi Huynh Mai speaks at the conference
Speaking at a regular press conference to inform about the epidemic situation in the city held by the city's Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control on November 22, Ms. Mai added that last week, the city documented approximately 1,000 cases a day. She advised city dwellers to strictly follow 5K principles.
Moreover, regarding the city’s proposal for seven-day self-isolation, Ms. Mai said that the city has put forward the proposal based on scientific studies. Specifically, while recording the number of newly infected cases in the city recently, the health sector has seen that 81 percent of patients who have received two doses of the vaccine have no symptoms, were negative on the seventh day and they are healthy days later. Subsequently, the health department advised the city to propose the Ministry of Health consider and pilot the isolation period of seven days.
Answering why people who have been vaccinated still die in Ho Chi Minh City, Ms. Mai shared that in the last three days (November 19, 20 and 21), the city recorded 151 deaths. Of 151 dead Covid-19 people, eighteen people had underlying condition health while 75 percent of cases did not receive Covid-19 vaccine jab or received only one dose of vaccine.
When the number of new Covid-19 cases increases, some infected people with underlying medical conditions will be at higher risk of developing severe outcomes of Covid-19 and a high risk of death even though they have received one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. "This number accounts for 5 percent of the 151 deaths in the past three days," Mai said.
When it comes to the question that people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 did not notify the locality and the health sector, Deputy Director of the city’s Center for Disease Control Nguyen Hong Tam admitted that it’s true blaming for the shortage of manpower at health stations. The city Department of Health has sent more doctors and nurses to work in mobile medical stations to get access to infected people as soon as possible.
Doctor Nguyen Hong Tam called on people to immediately notify the ward medical station or mobile medical station when they are positive for the fatal virus.
Within 24 hours, medical staff will come to the houses of patients for assessment of their health status. Therefore, if people report their testing results to the local health station, they will receive timely care. Contacts of infected people living under the same roof with Covid-19 patients will be closely monitored especially in families with elderly people, said Dr. Nguyen Hong Tam.
Previously, Deputy Head of the City's Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control Pham Duc Hai said that by the end of November 21, 456,956 Covid-19 cases have been detected in the city announced by the Ministry of Health, including 456,413 community infections and 543 imported cases.
Currently, around 13,721 patients are under treatment including 574 children under 16 years old, 327 critically ill patients on ventilators, 9 patients on life support from extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a technique employed to oxygenate a patient's blood outside the body so the heart and lungs can rest.
