In a report sent to the Prime Minister on August 10, the Ministry of Health explained that to consider Covid-19 as an endemic disease, it must meet the criteria of the disease occurring in a specific population group or in a certain area;

Meanwhile, Covid-19 in most countries has an unstable number of infections and deaths;

WHO proposes a plan to end the emergency of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2022 with the basic condition that the vaccine coverage rate reaches over 70% of the population globally;

Hanoi vaccinated children in April 2022.

In the world, no country has declared Covid-19 an endemic disease.

In Vietnam, Covid-19 is under control nationwide, but the number of cases has increased again recently and deaths are still recorded. Many serious cases are being monitored and treated.

`Vietnam basically meets the necessary conditions to transition from pandemic prevention to sustainable management, but still needs to be alert to new variants of the virus,` the Ministry of Health’s report stated.

The Ministry of Health also proposed that the Prime Minister not change Covid-19 from a group A infectious disease (especially dangerous, capable of very rapid transmission, wide spread, high mortality rate or unknown cause of the disease).

The reason is that mobilizing the participation of units in anti-epidemic work will no longer receive proper attention and people may be subjective.

The Ministry of Health also requested the Prime Minister not to announce the end of Covid-19 in Vietnam.

The above proposals of the Ministry of Health are basically unchanged compared to the report submitted to the Government for comments from ministries and branches on measures to combat Covid-19 in the new situation in June, although vaccine coverage increased.

Since the beginning of 2022, the Prime Minister has repeatedly asked units to consult international experience, move toward normalizing the epidemic, and consider Covid-19 as an endemic disease.

In the first seven months of 2022, Vietnam recorded more than 9 million cases of Covid-19, of which more than 8.5 million people recovered and nearly 11,000 died.

If calculated on a global scale, Vietnam ranks 4th among the countries with the highest number of new cases.

Write Tuan