Covid-19 to be treated like an endemic: PM

Vietnam will learn from international experience to deploy suitable and efficient anti-pandemic measures and gradually move to “normalization” with Covid-19, “treating it as an endemic disease”.

PM Pham Minh Chinh delivered the message at a cabinet meeting on Thursday. He ordered the Ministry of Health to assess the level of protection that antibiotics provides against Covid-19 nationwide.

According to the Ministry of Health, as Vietnam moved from the “zero-Covid strategy” to safe adapation to the disease, the ratio of fatalities to infections has declined. A recent survey shows 96 percent of Vietnamese people were happy with the government’s anti-Coronavirus measures, it said.

However, the ministry warned the pandemic will continue to be complicated. The WHO and many countries believe Covid-19 would not be entirely controlled before 2023, especially with the prevalence of Omicron and other variants which contain unpredictable risks, the ministry cited.

Since the fourth wave of Covid-19 outbreaks started in the country in April 2021, Vietnam has recorded over 3.7 million infections, of this 2.5 million cases were declared to recover.

78.9 million Vietnamese people or 81.8 percent of the population have been vaccinated at least once, according to latest official data. The figures for those inoculated two times are 76.1 million and 78.9 percent. Around 40.3 million people received the third dose or 41.8 percent of the population.

The WHO does not have clearly defined criteria for declaring Covid-19 an endemic disease, but its experts have previously said it will happen when the virus is more predictable and there are no sustained outbreaks.

Dr. David Nabarro, the organisation’s special envoy for Covid-19, in late January told the U.K.’s Sky News the virus is not like flu and should not be treated as such.

Some governments around the world, including Spain, the UK, Ireland and Japan drop restrictions and begin treating Covid-19 as an endemic illness like the flu, according to Forbes.

England has dropped face mask and Covid passport requirements and Prime Minister Boris Johnson said people "must learn to live with Covid in the same way we live with flu."

Thai health authorities in late January approved new guidelines outlining the parameters for declaring the pandemic an endemic disease. But Ministry of Public Health spokesman Rungrueng Kitphati said it would still be between six months and a year before the government would be able to make the decision to start treating COVID-19 as an illness that is here to stay, like the flu or measles, AP reported.

Speaking in late January at a World Economic Forum panel, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases doctor in the U.S., said COVID-19 could not be considered endemic until it drops to “a level that it doesn’t disrupt society.”