Hanoi shares COVID-19 response experience with world cities

Chairman of the Hanoi People’s Committee Nguyen Duc Chung shared COVID-19 prevention and control experience with mayors of other cities in the world during an online mayoral meeting within the framework of the Cities Against COVID-19 (CAC) Global Summit on June 2.

Speaking at the meeting, which attracted the presence of mayors of 42 cities around the world, Chung appreciated the initiative to hold the global summit of Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, as this is one of the effective measures to deal with the pandemic and serves as a premise for the cities to cooperate in addressing economic impact caused by the pandemic.

He told participants that Hanoi, with a population of over 10 million, has so far reported 114 coronavirus infections, of whom 113 have been given the all-clear.

The city has gone through 48 days without any community transmission, he stated, adding that there have been 328 cases and no fatality confirmed in Vietnam so far.

The Hanoi leader attributed the positive results to the sound leadership of leaders at all levels. Specifically, right after the epidemic broke out, Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong issued an appeal to the entire nation to take drastic prevention measures, and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued many directives on disease prevention and control based on the spirit of fighting epidemic like fighting an enemy, and prioritising people’s health over economic benefits.

Sharing the capital city’s experience, Chung said that Hanoi quickly traced people with possible contact with COVID-19 patients. All people with direct contacts have been quarantined at designated facilities, while those with indirect contacts have been quarantined at their houses under the close monitoring of grassroots health clinics. At peak times, over 50,000 people were quarantined at concentrated facilities, and an entire commune with more than 12,000 people were isolated. 

In addition to rapid response and contact tracing, Hanoi has provided information about the epidemic publicly and transparently via different means of communication, and developed the Hanoi Smartcity app to monitor quarantined people, he added.

In his remarks, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon expressed his hope to build an inter-city cooperation network to share and facilitate the implementation of measures in response to newly-emerging infectious diseases.

Participating cities adopted the Seoul Statement on solidarity and cooperation to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.