Doctor Nguyen Trung Cap: Vietnam has the courage to fight the epidemic and has been trained for a long time.

Survival lessons learned from SARS

Sharing at the seminar "Increasing resistance to prevent Covid-19 epidemic" on February 28, when talking about Vietnam's experience in fighting the epidemic, Dr. Nguyen Trung Cap - Head of the Emergency Department, Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases assessed that it can be seen that Vietnam has the courage to fight the epidemic and has been trained for a long time.

Even before the epidemic entered Vietnam, anti-epidemic systems were activated, which is of special importance.

When the epidemic entered our country, at the beginning there may have been some unstable points, but lessons were immediately learned and adjustments were made from the organization of quarantine, risk communication to the organization of logistics, anti-epidemic personnel...

Doctor Nguyen Trung Cap said that Vietnam learned a lot from the SARS epidemic in preventing and treating the Covid-19 epidemic.

"Every epidemic season, we carry out training activities, coaching, and support for the front lines, so the capacity of the front lines participating in the epidemic prevention process is getting better and better," Dr. Cap acknowledged.

As for the Covid-19 epidemic, there are many similarities with the SARS epidemic because they are from the same coronavirus family. Therefore, the experiences from the SARS epidemic also greatly support Vietnam in preventing the Covid-19 epidemic.

“One of the vital lessons from the SARS epidemic is that we did not use closed quarantine areas but used open quarantine areas. Therefore, quarantine and treatment can be brought to the locality and even to regional clinics like in Vinh Phuc and still ensure good quality of treatment,” Dr. Cap shared.

Furthermore, due to good internal communication, although treatment is at different levels, the treatment process and techniques are not much different due to the connection, transfer of techniques as well as reinforcement from the upper level to the lower level. These are the things we have gained through many epidemics.

In addition, according to Dr. Cap, the country's epidemic prevention capacity has increased thanks to the participation of all people. It can be seen that through each epidemic season, people's awareness has increased significantly, such as washing hands, wearing masks...

"4 on-site" is effective

Regarding the treatment regimen, Dr. Cap affirmed that so far, most of the knowledge about Covid-19 in Vietnam has been obtained from research in Wuhan, China.

Therefore, the treatment regimens of Vietnam and the World Health Organization (WHO) are completely consistent with each other, there is no difference. However, when applied specifically in practice, they have some innovative points.

Doctor Cap cited that China's epidemic prevention motto is to apply "4 early" and "4 concentrated", including: "Early detection, early reporting, early isolation, early treatment" and "concentrating on patients, concentrating on experts, concentrating on resources, concentrating on treatment".

Meanwhile, Vietnam applies 4 on-site: On-site isolation, on-site treatment, on-site resources and on-site supplies.

Vietnam quarantines and treats patients at the grassroots level, instead of concentrating them on the central level. In the photo, a Covid-19 positive patient is treated at Quang Ha clinic in Vinh Phuc.

"It's not about which one is superior, but "4 concentrated" is more suitable for China's situation and "4 on-the-spot" is more suitable for Vietnam's situation," said Dr. Cap.

Or the use of open quarantine areas is suitable for the climate and weather conditions of Vietnam, but for Wuhan, open quarantine will be very cold. Therefore, Wuhan is forced to use negative pressure rooms or negative pressure quarantine areas.

Vietnam quarantines and treats patients at the grassroots level, instead of concentrating them on the central level. In the photo, a Covid-19 positive patient is treated at Quang Ha clinic in Vinh Phuc.

These are some creative applications, suitable for Vietnam's climate conditions compared to the instructions and protocols of neighboring countries.

According to Dr. Cap, experience in treating 16 Covid-19 cases this time as well as previous cases of treating SARS or other epidemics that have occurred in Vietnam shows that the Vietnamese medical sector has enough capacity to deal with complicated situations as well as severe and difficult patients.

However, experience from all past epidemic seasons shows that successful control requires the participation of all sectors, levels, political and social organizations as well as all people.

“Up to now, people can completely trust in the preventive capacity of the entire health sector. However, any success requires the joint contribution of the people,” Dr. Cap emphasized.

Doctor Cap recommends that, with the current situation, people can be calm and confident but must not be subjective when the epidemic has spread to more than 50 countries and territories.

In China, just one case of quarantine evasion had to be monitored by 4,000 people. One Korean patient who did not comply with quarantine infected dozens of people and the number may not stop there, so the cooperation of all people is especially important.

With the initial efforts and successes, WHO and US CDC highly appreciated Vietnam's Covid-19 prevention measures with high determination, synchronous, effective, public and transparent solutions, especially the work of isolation, zoning, treatment and expressed the wish that Vietnam continue to share information and experience in Covid-19 prevention with the international community.