Secretary of the Hanoi Party’s Committee Dinh Tien Dung chairs a meeting with the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on the pandemic situation and response efforts in the city on May 10. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

Hanoi (VNA) – Secretary of the Hanoi Party’s Committee Dinh Tien Dung has hailed outlying Dong Anh district’s three-layer zoning model as a creative way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 without upsetting people’s lives, saying it must be multiplied in the city.

Dung made the statement while chairing a meeting with the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on the pandemic situation and response efforts in the city on May 10.

According to Director of the municipal Department of Health Tran Thi Nhi Ha, since the COVID-19 pandemic re-emerged in Hanoi on April 29, the city has recorded 46 community infections in 11 districts, with 28 places being put under lockdown.

Thanks to swift contact tracing efforts, all current eight pandemic clusters have been brought under control, she said, adding that there are 11 COVID-19 patients (F0) linked to the outbreak in the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases No. 2 in Dong Anh district who had a total of 271 close contacts (F1). Meanwhile, the outbreak in K Hospital’s Tan Trieu campus has had two F0s with 71 F1s, and that linked to Bac Ninh has seen 14 F0s and 122 F1s.

The three clusters are of particular concern as the number of cases linked to them has been on the rise, Ha said, urging for more drastic measures to quickly contain the virus spread.

Secretary of the Hanoi Party’s Committee Dinh Tien Dung speaks at the meeting. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

The city has increased its coronavirus testing capacity by 10 times, from 3,000 to about 30,000 samples per day, which will be further accelerated. It plans to ramp up screening tests for high-risk people or those living in high-risk areas to early detect infections and make risk assessments.

According to the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, all COVID-19 cases in Hanoi have been reported with known sources of infection but the city still faces the risk of a new wave of community infections. It suggested the city to soon draw up a plan and various response scenarios to ensure the safety for the elections of deputies to the 15th National Assembly and all-level People’s Councils for the 2021 – 2026 term.

Le Trung Kien, Secretary of the Party’s Committee of Dong Anh district, one of the city’s COVID-19 hotspots at present, proposed the city to soon begin a mass vaccination drive, set up COVID-19 treatment hospitals in each area and place quarantine sites under the management of military forces.

Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Chu Ngoc Anh said the suburb district of Gia Lam should be counted as a high-risk area as it borders the COVID-19-struck district of Thuan Thanh in Bac Ninh province. Gia Lam must act quickly by establishing checkpoints and review its residents’ travel history to Thuan Thanh.

Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Chu Ngoc Anh speaks at the meeting. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

Lieu. Gen. Nguyen Hai Trung, Director of the Hanoi Department of Public Security, asked the Department for Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs to tighten control on licensing entry of foreign workers and experts into Vietnam and suggested the two departments work together to review the licensing procedures.

Concluding the meeting, Secretary of the municipal Party Committee Dinh Tien Dung demanded all local authorities and administrations, from village to district levels, to keep guard up against the pandemic and uphold the principle “fighting the pandemic is like fighting the enemy.”

He cited Dong Anh district’s three-layer zoning model as a creative way to fight COVID-19, saying it should be multiplied in other districts.

Under the model, all positive cases are quarantined as the core layer. For the second layer, there are checkpoints set up in every locked-down alley to deliver necessities to isolated households and the outer layer involved health checkpoints to measure the body temperature and record the information of everyone entering and leaving the alleys.

Using the model, the district locked down the source of the disease but did not impact the local residents' daily life, and production and business.

“The city will not lock itself down in an extreme way that affects socio-economic development,” Dung said. “We will calmly deal with the COVID-19 and ♐what we have been doing are proper 🔴and effective"./.