Speaking at the event, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said the deep international integration allowed diverse sources of infection to enter our country, therefore, Viet Nam needed more drastic, simultaneous and prompt solutions to effectively prevent these sources and handle people trying to cover up COVID-19.

Restressing the motto of “fighting against the disease like fighting against enemies”, the PM said there was no room for trial-and-error; we needed proactive approaches to protect people’s health. The Government is ready to scarify economic benefits to prevent COVID-19.

Prime Minister said Viet Nam successfully treated 16 infected people including two patients from China’s Wuhan.

The Government delivered a significant political message on the nation’s spirit and solidarity to overcome the virus outbreak. With that spirit, PM Phuc expressed the high hope to efficiently prevent sources of infections in the country.

He asked the national steering committee to come up with specific solution to prevent all sources of infections to minimise losses caused by the spreading of COVID-19.

At the event, the national steering committee said, as of 8pm on March 3, the world reported 106,355 infections, 3,600 deaths in 102 countries and territories, most of infections and deaths were in mainland China (80,695 infections, 3,097 deaths. Since February 27, new infections in other countries have outnumbered those in China.

In 101 countries and territories outside of China, 25,600 infected cases were reported including eight countries and territories had more than 500 people tested positive to SARS-CoV-2: South Korea (7,313), Italy (5,823), France (949), Germany (847), Japan (1,167 in which Diamond Princess had 706 cases) and Spain (517).

The national steering committee issued the Official Document No 1120/CV-BCĐ on March 7, asking provincial people’s committees to quarantine passengers on the flight No VN0054. For 27 passengers whose addresses remained unknown, provincial authorities would be responsible to track their places of stay to implement preventative measures.

Forecasting the disease’s developments, the committee said the number of infections would keep increasing as it had not been able to monitor all people having close contacts with passengers on the flight. Moreover, the number of infected countries and territories have risen, making it harder to prevent the disease from entering Viet Nam. In the next few days, there would be many other infected cases reported. It is essential to implement measures to prevent the disease including detecting sources of infections, preventing them to spread, quarantining suspected cases and zoning to content the disease.

Viet Nam is now implementing the visa-waiver programme for citizens of 13 countries. The committee asked Prime Minister to suspend the programme for citizens from eight countries including South Korea, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France and Spain. For the rest three countries of Russia, Japan and Belarus, the suspension will be applied once the number of infections reaches 500 or more than 50 infected cases are reported in one day.

The committee also asked Prime Minister to direct ministries, State agencies and local authorities to not appoint officials have overseas study or work trips except for special events approved by Prime Minister, at the same time, warn citizens against travel abroad during this time./.