After more than a year of battle, the virus in Vietnam left 35 people on the field – surprising for one Country of 97 million inhabitants. It is surprising that just over 2,700 people were hit in three weak offensives, without ever exceeding, even in the darkest periods of the pandemic, the ceiling of 110 new cases per day. A small fraction of the current 14,000 in Italy, which even has a third fewer inhabitants. And today life runs smoothly there: apart from short and targeted lockdowns, people go out, go to concerts; clubs, schools and restaurants are open.
The guard level for remains high. The American news site Vox reports that in Haiphong, not far from the capital, Hanoi, dozens of checkpoints were set up in February for the Tet Festival, the Vietnamese New Year, the most important holiday in the country where families move to get together and to celebrate. A contagion in your neighborhood is enough to get stuck: one case and the area of origin turns red, you can’t move from there. In March, Vietnam also suspended internal flights, in the country that first sealed its borders to the outside. At the beginning of last year, while Europe and the US concentrated on protecting themselves from countries with full-blown cases of covid, Vietnam was closed to the world. In mid-March he suspended all foreigners’ visas and blocked flights.
While in Western countries travel restrictions chase infections, restricted to the most affected countries, with quarantines that are often not compulsory and loopholes allowed, Vietnam is sealed off. As the West goes along with accordion, easing measures when cases come down, Vietnam has kept its barriers in place, even in times with zero new cases. The fewer infections there are, the more the restrictions at the border have value: they work better when they seem excessive, before or after the transmission of the virus takes place, says Mark Jit, epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, overturning beliefs and practices. , most popular so far.
Even today, arriving in Vietnam is allowed only to restricted categories of people, such as businessmen, and only if they come from low-risk countries. In any case, anyone who wants to enter requires special government permits and must then do a 21-day quarantine under state surveillance.
Limitation of mobility and mandatory quarantines have been joined in Vietnam by other measures such as tight tracking, targeted and timely lockdowns, voluntary tests: a mix of measures that help to understand how the Vietnam managed to stop the virus before even starting mass vaccination.
Few countries are so drastic in addressing the pandemic. Vietnam is a communist state with a per capita GDP of $ 2,700, which in the year of the pandemic it recorded growth of 2.9%, the best performance in Asia. And this has favored the population’s support for anti-pandemic measures.
Sure, a one-party political system it helped to respond faster and more compactly to the health crisis. But it is not simply a question of pitting totalitarianism and Western democracies, observes Kelley Lee, a professor of global health at Simon Fraser University, who studies the impact of restrictions on movements. As Francesco Magris also suggested in Corriere, this victory cannot be explained exclusively in the usual and self-absolving formula of a dictatorship and certain measures that are politically impracticable can be adopted there.
So much so that even one small democracy, Taiwan, boasts few cases and only 11 deaths in total. To save Vietnam, like Taiwan, he contributed above all fear of China, epicenter of the pandemic: the two neighboring countries had a timely reaction and put in place an articulated plan of measures to defend themselves from what they consider to be a nearby threat. But in a globalized world we are all bordering on China.
Broaden the shot Walter Ricciardi, in an editorial on Future: What do New Zealand and Taiwan, Rwanda and Iceland, Australia and Vietnam, Cyprus and Thailand have in common? Little or nothing from a geographical, cultural, economic and social point of view and for they are all countries in which life today flows more or less normally thanks the choice not to live with the virus, but to stop it and, if possible, eliminate it – summarizes the advisor to the minister Roberto Speranza – They made bold choices.
April 24, 2021 (change April 24, 2021 | 15:39)
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