The COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam has resulted in 11,624,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 43,206 deaths. The number of confirmed cases is the highest total in Southeast Asia, and the 13th highest in the world. Hanoi is the most affected locale with 1,649,654 confirmed cases and 1,238 deaths, followed by Ho Chi Minh City with 628,736 cases and 20,476 deaths; however, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health has estimated that the real number of cases may be four to five times higher.
On 31 December 2019, China announced the discovery of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan; the news had circulated on Vietnamese media by early January 2020. The virus was first confirmed to have spread to Vietnam on 23 January 2020, when two Chinese people in Ho Chi Minh City tested positive for the virus. Early cases were primarily imported until local transmission began to develop in February and March. Clusters of cases were later detected in Vĩnh Phúc, Hải Dương, and three other major cities, with the first death on 31 July 2020.
During 2020, the Vietnamese government's efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 were mostly successful. The country pursued a zero-COVID strategy, using contact tracing, mass testing, quarantining, and lockdowns to aggressively suppress transmission of the virus. Vietnam suspended the entry of nearly all foreigners from 22 March 2020 until 17 November 2021 to limit the spread of the virus. The measure did not apply to diplomats, officials, foreign investors, experts, and skilled workers. On 5 January 2021, the government strengthened prevention and control of COVID-19, particularly through border control, with the principle of "protecting people's health first." Individuals entering Vietnam had to isolate for at least 14 days if they were unvaccinated, or seven days if they had been fully vaccinated, and were contained in government-funded quarantine facilities. Specially designated individuals such as diplomats were exempt.
Vietnam experienced its largest outbreak beginning in April 2021, with over 1.2 million infections recorded by that November. This led to two of its largest cities, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and around a third of the country's population coming under some form of lockdown by late July. A shortage of the AstraZeneca vaccine supply in the country, along with some degree of complacency after successes in previous outbreaks, as well as infections originating from foreign workers, were considered to have contributed to the outbreak. In response, government-mandated quarantine for foreign arrivals and close contacts to confirmed cases were extended to 21 days, and accompanying safety measures were also increased. The emergence of the Omicron variant brought about a rapid rise in infections in early 2022, although drastically fewer deaths were reported due to high vaccination rates in the country. Infection rates dropped and stabilised throughout 2022 and 2023, leading to the end of COVID-19's classification as a severe transmissible disease in June 2023.
Although the pandemic has heavily disrupted the country's economy, Vietnam's GDP growth rate has remained one of the highest in Asia-Pacific, at 2.91% in 2020. Due to the more severe impact of the outbreak in 2021, Vietnam's GDP grew at a slower rate, at 2.58%.
Vaccinations commenced on 8 March 2021 with a total of 200,179,247 administered vaccination doses reported by 12 March 2022. The Vietnamese Ministry of Health has approved the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine, the Sputnik V vaccine, the Sinopharm BIBP vaccine, the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, the Janssen vaccine, and the Abdala vaccine. Vietnam also approved Covaxin from Bharat Biotech. As of 13 March 2022, a total of 221,807,484 doses have arrived in Vietnam.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam has resulted in 11,624,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 43,206 deaths. The number of confirmed cases is the highest total in Southeast Asia, and the 13th highest in the world. Hanoi is the most affected locale with 1,649,654 confirmed cases and 1,238 deaths, followed by Ho Chi Minh City with 628,736 cases and 20,476 deaths; however, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health has estimated that the real number of cases may be four to five times higher.
On 31 December 2019, China announced the discovery of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan; the news had circulated on Vietnamese media by early January 2020. The virus was first confirmed to have spread to Vietnam on 23 January 2020, when two Chinese people in Ho Chi Minh City tested positive for the virus. Early cases were primarily imported until local transmission began to develop in February and March. Clusters of cases were later detected in Vĩnh Phúc, Hải Dương, and three other major cities, with the first death on 31 July 2020.
During 2020, the Vietnamese government's efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 were mostly successful. The country pursued a zero-COVID strategy, using contact tracing, mass testing, quarantining, and lockdowns to aggressively suppress transmission of the virus. Vietnam suspended the entry of nearly all foreigners from 22 March 2020 until 17 November 2021 to limit the spread of the virus. The measure did not apply to diplomats, officials, foreign investors, experts, and skilled workers. On 5 January 2021, the government strengthened prevention and control of COVID-19, particularly through border control, with the principle of "protecting people's health first." Individuals entering Vietnam had to isolate for at least 14 days if they were unvaccinated, or seven days if they had been fully vaccinated, and were contained in government-funded quarantine facilities. Specially designated individuals such as diplomats were exempt.
Vietnam experienced its largest outbreak beginning in April 2021, with over 1.2 million infections recorded by that November. This led to two of its largest cities, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and around a third of the country's population coming under some form of lockdown by late July. A shortage of the AstraZeneca vaccine supply in the country, along with some degree of complacency after successes in previous outbreaks, as well as infections originating from foreign workers, were considered to have contributed to the outbreak. In response, government-mandated quarantine for foreign arrivals and close contacts to confirmed cases were extended to 21 days, and accompanying safety measures were also increased. The emergence of the Omicron variant brought about a rapid rise in infections in early 2022, although drastically fewer deaths were reported due to high vaccination rates in the country. Infection rates dropped and stabilised throughout 2022 and 2023, leading to the end of COVID-19's classification as a severe transmissible disease in June 2023.
Although the pandemic has heavily disrupted the country's economy, Vietnam's GDP growth rate has remained one of the highest in Asia-Pacific, at 2.91% in 2020. Due to the more severe impact of the outbreak in 2021, Vietnam's GDP grew at a slower rate, at 2.58%.
Vaccinations commenced on 8 March 2021 with a total of 200,179,247 administered vaccination doses reported by 12 March 2022. The Vietnamese Ministry of Health has approved the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine, the Sputnik V vaccine, the Sinopharm BIBP vaccine, the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, the Janssen vaccine, and the Abdala vaccine. Vietnam also approved Covaxin from Bharat Biotech. As of 13 March 2022, a total of 221,807,484 doses have arrived in Vietnam.
Background
Novel infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, are a significant public health threat. Although human coronaviruses (CoVs) were known as major pathogens which caused respiratory illnesses, a new strain of coronavirus known as SARS-CoV caused an outbreak in 29 countries from 2002 to 2004. The outbreak, which infected 8,098 people and caused 774 deaths, Evidence showed that the virus may have originated from an animal coronavirus that found its way into the human population. indicated that animal coronaviruses could be dangerous to humans.
Although it is still unknown exactly where COVID-19 began, many early cases have been attributed to visitors to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, Hubei, China. The earliest known symptomatic person was later discovered to have become ill on 1 December 2019, but that person was apparently unconnected to the later wet-market cluster; an earlier case possibly occurred on 17 November. China reported the cluster on 31 December 2019, and the World Health Organization (WHO) issued its first report on the outbreak on 5 January 2020. A week later, the WHO confirmed that a novel coronavirus caused a cluster of respiratory illness reported earlier in Wuhan. On 20 January, the WHO and China confirmed that human-to-human transmission had occurred. WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January, saying that its Wuhan investigation was finished and citing mounting evidence that the novel coronavirus had spread to 18 countries.
Vietnam has a history of managing pandemics; it was the second country (after China) to address the 2002–04 SARS outbreak and, after 63 cases and five deaths, was the first country to be declared SARS-free by the WHO. Since that outbreak, Vietnam had increased investment in its public-health infrastructure, developed a national public health emergency operations center and a national public health surveillance system, and maintained systems to collect public data. Since 2016, hospitals are required to report notifiable diseases to a central database within 24 hours so the Ministry of Health can track epidemiological developments nationwide. In collaboration with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Vietnam implemented an "event-based" surveillance program in 2018 which enables the public to report public-health issues. Officials can identify clusters of people with similar symptoms, which might indicate an outbreak.
With a population of nearly 100 million and millions of visitors from China, the country's largest trading partner, annually, Vietnam was initially perceived as likely to be hard-hit by the pandemic. When the country recorded its first two cases on 23 January 2020, it was among the first countries affected by COVID-19. Two weeks later, only 150 cases had been reported outside mainland China; ten were in Vietnam, however, making it one of the top-ten affected countries. By early 2021, Vietnam was one of the countries with the lowest case count and mortality per million inhabitants.
Epidemiology
Timeline
First cases
The first two confirmed cases in Vietnam, a Chinese man born in 1954 and his son, were admitted to Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City on 22 January 2020. The son was believed to have contracted the virus from his father (who flew from Wuhan on 13 January) when they met in Nha Trang on 17 January. The first cluster appeared in Son Loi Commune, Bình Xuyên District, Vĩnh Phúc, after several workers returned from a Wuhan training trip and infected people in close contact with them. The Vietnamese government locked down the district until 4 March to prevent further spread, the first large-scale lockdown outside China. Identifying cases early gave Vietnam some success in combating the virus. The first 16 cases were a cross-section of the population (infants, the elderly, and people with underlying conditions), which the country's medical system used as "an exercise" to prepare for the new virus.
March 2020–2021: sporadic outbreaks and strict measures
As the pandemic began to spread worldwide, COVID-19 cases in Vietnam also surged. On the evening of 6 March, the Hanoi Department of Health confirmed the capital's first case: a 26-year-old woman who had travelled to Europe, the country's 17th recorded case. During the afternoon of 20 March, the Ministry of Health reported two new COVID-19 patients (Vietnam's 86th and 87th): two female nurses at Bạch Mai Hospital with no history of contact with COVID-19 patients. In March and April 2020, the number of cases increased rapidly due to the large number of people coming from European countries and the appearance of clusters which included Bạch Mai Hospital, Ha Loi Commune in Hanoi, and the Buddha Bar in Ho Chi Minh City.
On 21 March 2020, Vietnam suspended entry for all foreigners effective the following midnight, and introduced a mandatory fourteen-day quarantine for all incoming Vietnamese citizens. The country imposed a fifteen-day nationwide lockdown on 1 April, when former Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc announced that COVID-19 had spread throughout Vietnam. The drastic epidemic-control measures had positive results, and the country did not confirm any cases of local transmission from mid-April to the end of July. Vietnam began loosening restrictions in May, again permitting domestic travel.
The country entered its second wave of infection when the Ministry of Health announced the 416th case in Da Nang – the first case with an unknown source in 99 days. On 28 July, Da Nang authorities locked down the city for 15 days. Hundreds of cases across the country connected to the Da Nang outbreak were detected, and the first death was recorded on 31 July. After two months Vietnam contained the disease for the second time and resumed almost all economic activity, including international commercial flights. Sporadic community infections continued in November and December, alarming the public and requiring increased measures.
The third wave of infection began on 28 January 2021, when Vietnam reported 84 community-transmission cases in one day in the provinces of Hải Dương and Quảng Ninh. Most were linked to a Hai Duong migrant worker who was diagnosed with the UK variant by Japanese authorities after arriving in Osaka on 17 January. To limit the outbreak's economic impact, the government initially quarantined areas directly related to the infected people; after two weeks, however, the increasing number of cases showed no sign of slowing. Hai Duong was locked down for 15 days on 15 February, and Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City halted all entertainment activities. This was one of the most serious outbreaks, due to a slow tracing process, mismanagement of quarantine facilities, and disobedience of lockdown rules in the face of enduring restrictions. On 7 March 2021, the situation in the northern provinces appeared to have been brought largely under control as the number of new cases fell to single digits. Vietnam began its COVID-19 vaccination campaign the following day.
April 2021–October 2023: Severe outbreak and endemic stage
Since the end of April 2021, Vietnam experienced "a fast-spreading outbreak" of over 700,000 cases. Clusters were found in Bac Giang province industrial parks and at least ten major hospitals throughout the country. According to the WHO, Vietnam has built over 30 field hospitals with 1,500 ICU beds and 30,000 non-ICU beds. When total cases reached several thousand per day, the government locked down Southern Vietnam and Hanoi. On 26 July 2021, for the first time in Vietnam's disease prevention history, Ho Chi Minh City imposed a daily 6:00 pm curfew; no one could leave the city, and only emergency services were permitted to operate. The National Assembly authorised the central government on 28 July to implement local emergency measures to curb the pandemic. On 20 August, Nguyễn Thành Phong was dismissed by the Politburo as chair of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City. The government also moved 10,000 troops into the city to enforce the lockdown and deliver food. A main cause of the outbreak was a four-day holiday for Reunification Day and International Workers' Day, during which many vacation destinations were packed with travelers. DNA sequencing indicated that the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant dominated this wave, particularly in central and southern Vietnam.
On 29 August 2021, Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính stated that Vietnam might have to live with the virus and could not rely on indefinite closures and quarantines. This marked a major change in the country's approach to COVID-19, forcing Vietnam to accelerate its vaccination campaign to control the pandemic. The number of new cases began to fall to several thousand per day in mid-September, and restrictions were eased. Vietnam recorded its first case of the Omicron variant in December, leading to a significant new wave of infections going into the first months of 2022, with the highest 7-day average of 217,164 cases recorded on 13 March. However, due to the country's widespread vaccination coverage, deaths remained low in proportion to the number of confirmed cases.
In March 2022, Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính declared COVID-19 to be "endemic" and considered ending daily reporting of new cases. An article in Bloomberg noted that Vietnam has a high level of vaccination and has seen a dramatic drop in COVID-19 related deaths. However, in August, the Ministry of Health issued a recommendation to not declare COVID-19 endemic, and to instead shift the country's response from "prevention" to "stable management".
In June 2023, Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính stated that COVID-19 no longer constituted a severe transmissible disease, leaving the jurisdiction of future COVID-19 prevention and classification to the Ministry of Health. The National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control was dissolved on 29 October 2023. Two days later, the Ministry of Health published its last COVID-19 daily report.
Variants
The COVID-19 strain which entered Vietnam in the second wave had a mutation which increased its infection rate, leading to a higher number of cases than the first wave. The basic reproduction number (R0) in the second wave was 5 to 6; in April, it was 1.8 to 2.2. The rate of people testing positive for COVID-19 who had had indirect contact with COVID-19 patients was higher than in the previous wave. Minister of Health Nguyễn Thanh Long said that the new strain may have begun to spread in early July 2020. Da Nang had experienced four waves of infection by that month. The health ministry sent experts to Da Nang to help the city contain the infection and quickly identify its source, submitting the new strain's data to a world gene bank for comparison. On 4 August, the ministry confirmed the dominant second-wave strain as D614G (the dominant global variant). A study published by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said that patients infected by that mutation have a heavier viral load and are more likely to infect others. Vietnam has recorded ten COVID-19 strains: the original Wuhan strain and the Alpha, A.23.1 (from Rwanda), Beta, B.1.222, B.1.619, Delta, D614G, Epsilon and Omicron variants.
Reinfection and recurrence
Many COVID-19 patients in Vietnam have reported positive tests after they were considered to have recovered from the disease. This has also occurred in other countries, such as the United States, South Korea, and China. South Korea's Central Clinical Committee for Emerging Disease Control head Oh Myoung-don rejected the possibility of reinfection, saying that patients probably tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 because "the testing kit collected RNA from dead virus fragments, [which] may remain in the body for months". Vietnam Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long agreed, saying that a patient may not have fully recovered; the virus might still exist in the body, particularly in lung cells.