Daily COVID-19 Update 4 August 2021
Vietnam to approve Remdesivir for COVID-19 treatment
The Vietnamese Ministry of Health is slated to authorize the inclusion of Remdesivir in the treatment of COVID-19 soon, national radio VOV quoted Deputy Minister Nguyen Truong Son as saying on Tuesday. The deputy minister warned people against buying and using the drug without a doctor’s prescription. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration approved Remdesivir for adults and pediatric patients, who are 12 years and older and weigh at least 40 kilograms, for the treatment of COVID-19 requiring hospitalization on October 22, 2020. Remdesivir is an antiviral drug that can shorten the duration of treatment and accelerate recovery in patients with severe COVID-19 conditions. At the moment, the drug has been included in the treatment of the respiratory disease in 50 countries such as the U.S., Australia, Japan, Singapore, India, and many nations in Europe. Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup successfully negotiated an order of 500,000 vials of Remdesivir previously. The vials are manufactured by Cipla Ltd., a leading pharmaceutical company in India, under a non-exclusive voluntary licensing agreement from Gilead Sciences Inc., a research-based biopharmaceutical company in the U.S. The order is expected to be shipped to Vietnam this month so that the drug can be promptly presented to the Ministry of Health. The drug will be used for COVID-19 patients at moderate and more severity levels, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said at an online meeting on the COVID-19 pandemic prevention on Monday.
Vietnam cuts quarantine time for vaccinated entrants
Fully vaccinated people arriving in Vietnam will have to spend seven days in centralized quarantine and self monitor their health in the following week, the Health Ministry said Wednesday. A document by the ministry said entrants with proper certificates to show that they have been fully vaccinated with the last dose given between 14 days and 12 months before arrival, and have tested negative for the coronavirus within 72 hours before arrival, would only need to go under centralized quarantine for seven days instead of the usual 14 days. Additionally, those infected with Covid-19 and have certificates to prove that they have recovered from it within the last six months would also see their centralized quarantine period reduced. Following centralized quarantine, entrants would need to monitor their own health for the next seven days, while constantly using contact tracing app Bluezone. The health ministry has requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue guidance on evaluating and certifying Covid-19 vaccination and recovery certificates. Localities should provide opportunities for entrants to be quarantined in hotels if needed, and entrants would pay the quarantine fees themselves. Further details including implementation date have not been revealed. Since last month, the health ministry has trialed a similar quarantine approach in the northern province of Quang Ninh, which allows fully vaccinated individuals or recovered Covid-19 patients to undergo seven days in centralized quarantine.