HCMC says prepared for 15-day lockdown

In Vietnam’s biggest city, with a population of 13 million, people are required to stay at home except to buy food or medicines or go to work at factories and businesses that are permitted to open.

Authorities have also suspended all food and drink delivery, both by restaurants themselves and via food delivery apps.

The city administration said enough food and other essential products are available to ensure people’s daily life is not affected.

The 120,000 tons of food available now represents three times the usual volume.

To distribute it, 106 supermarkets, 124 wet markets and more than 2,000 mini supermarkets and convenience stores and over 28,000 grocery stores will operate normally.

Consumers can also rely on 17 supermarkets to deliver online, authorities said.

In the past 20 days the city has recorded 374 Covid cases on average daily, going up to 400 in the last eight days.

As of Friday morning the city has had more than 9,400 infections, and authorities have warned more should be expected in the coming days.

The city has plans to treat up to 20,000 cases at a time, and set up four more field hospitals with 12,000 beds for the purpose.

Chairman Nguyen Thanh Phong has asked the Ministry of Health and other related units for 1,000 doctors and 4,000 nurses.

For now the city will continue with the mass testing it began on June 26, and targets collecting 1.3 million samples a day.

It planned to collect 400,000 samples a day, but since June 26 has run tests on more than 1.7 million samples.

More than 15,000 people are in quarantine after coming into contact with patients.

The city has 11 quarantine facilities that can accommodate almost 10,400, 59 district-level camps that can take in another 6,800 and 58 designated hotels with 4,870 beds.

Recently it decided to use 1,300 houses built in Binh Chanh District and Thu Duc City to resettle people whose properties have been acquired for public projects as quarantine facilities.

It has also approved a proposal to allow people to isolate themselves at home if they meet certain conditions, including a negative quick test result.