After months of some form of a lockdown, Vietnam’s largest city and epicenter of the country’s fourth Covid wave, Ho Chi Minh City, has lifted its “shelter-in-place” order and is allowing many businesses to resume operations. Finally, it seems that a sense of normalcy is returning, yet the city’s battle against Covid-19 is far from over. The following is Access Asia’s latest update on the situation in Vietnam in collaboration with Vietnam Weekly, a subscription-based publication covering current affairs in Vietnam. Starting today (Oct 1), businesses in Ho Chi Minh City except for bars, spas, karaoke and massage parlors, beauty […]

After weeks of reporting mostly negative developments about the Covid-19 pandemic in Vietnam, this week’s update is finally positive. Several key health indicators here have improved recently, while there has been a lot of official discussion of a ‘new normal’ beginning October 1 (Ho Chi Minh City’s strict “shelter-in-place” lockdown expires on September 30). The seven-day rolling national average of Covid cases has fallen to 9,938 – the lowest that number has been in about five weeks – and health officials said that Ho Chi Minh City has passed its peak. Large-scale testing in at-risk areas over the weekend returned a positivity […]

Vietnam’s Covid-19 situation has worsened over the past week, while events over the weekend in Ho Chi Minh City – the current epicentre of Vietnam’s fourth wave – were somewhat chaotic due to a lack of clarity on the next phase of the city’s response to containing the outbreak. City residents scrambled to buy supplies in anticipation of a city-wide blockade and a strict stay at home policy, likely creating a number of super-spreading incidents.  We expect the worst has yet to come for HCMC and that the number of cases and fatalities will continue to spike in the coming […]

Vietnam is continuing to battle major Covid-19 outbreaks throughout the country and unfortunately this past week has not seen any major breakthrough in curbing the situation. The good news, however, is that the vaccination drive is pushing ahead at full speed and the situation in Ho Chi Minh City, the epicentre, appears to be stabilizing. The following is Access Asia Group’s latest update on the Covid-19 situation in collaboration with Vietnam Weekly, a subscription-based publication covering current affairs in Vietnam. The latest data At the start of the week, 206,439 cases had been detected in this outbreak. That figure is now 242,552, 152,561 […]

Vietnam is continuing to battle major Covid-19 outbreaks as the Delta variant takes its course over a country that up until April had been mostly spared from the pandemic. The good news is that data over the last few days indicates cases may have plateaued (granted it may be too early to draw any conclusions). Certainly, aggressive containment measures and  a major vaccination mobilization campaign are working, yet the battle will be a drawn out one as strict containment measures cannot be in place indefinitely without major economic and social repercussions. The following is Access Asia Group’s latest update on the […]