Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam chairs a meeting of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, Ha Noi, April 27, 2021. Photo: Internet

Dam, who is head of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, stressed the point during the committee’s meeting on Tuesday.

Globally, there have been more than 148 million infection cases, including 3.1 million fatalities. Noticeably, more than 18 new cases were confirmed over the last week, accounting for 12.4% of the world’s patient tally.

In India, the pandemic remains complicated and the healthcare system is at its peak due to surge of new infections.

Many other countries have reported resurgence of COVID-19 after relaxing preventive measures while some regional countries like Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia have recorded huge jump in COVID-19 cases.

Domestically, the pandemic has been controlled well as Viet Nam has gone 33 days without a single community infection case, thus many people began to relax on COVID-19 prevention measures, particularly mask wearing.

Meanwhile, illegal immigration still occurs and quarantine facilities, if not managed well, could be a source of transmissions.

Against the backdrop, Deputy PM Vu ordered subordinate levels to continue implementation of preventive measures, strictly control border areas, and encourage people to report illegal entrants to competent authorities.

Vu called on Vietnamese people living and working abroad to try to refrain from travels, stay on in the host countries, and abide by the host countries’ COVID-19 prevention measures.

The National Steering Committee asked the Ministry of Health to update the world’s new COVID-19 test technologies and quickly import those proved to be effective in order to meet requirements for future pandemic prevention and control work.

High-risk localities, especially Southwestern provinces must strengthen testing capacity while ministries and agencies have to reassess the capacity of both State and civilian quarantine sites to ensure absolute safety and set up plans to expand quarantine capacity in case of infection spikes.

The Ministry of Health was urged to speed up COVID-19 vaccination progress, actively work to diversify sources of foreign vaccine supplies, and accelerate homegrown vaccine research, development and production./.