Caution still urged on 'endemic' virus

With Vietnam considering treating COVID-19 as endemic, experts are urging people not to lower their guard against the disease regardless of how it is classified.

Under the "new normal" that countries are adjusting to, it is acceptable to view COVID-19 as a common disease, said Tikki Pang, visiting professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. However, Pang is quick to counter any misperceptions that this means the disease has become harmless.

Although the Omicron variant of the coronavirus tends to cause milder symptoms compared with previous variants, "the disease can still have serious consequences, even death, in those who are unvaccinated, the elderly, or have underlying serious diseases", Pang told China Daily.

Vietnam's Health Ministry on Saturday proposed ending the daily COVID-19 updates because "they do not reflect the true nature of the pandemic situation" and can cause needless worry among people, news website VnExpress reported.

The ministry is taking gradual steps toward treating COVID-19 as a common disease at an appropriate time, according to the report. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had said on March 3 that the country will move toward "normalizing" the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite rising daily infections in the country, Vietnamese Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said the rates of hospitalization, severe cases and deaths have dropped significantly.

Daily infections rose to a new high on Wednesday, bringing the total caseload to more than 5 million, with more than 41,000 deaths, according to the Health Ministry.

Booster program

Compared with January, the number of community cases nationwide increased 198 percent in the past month, but deaths from the disease fell 47 percent, the ministry said on Saturday.

"Vietnam at the moment is actually facing the peak of the Omicron curve," said Maurizio Trevisan, professor and dean of health sciences at VinUniversity in Hanoi. "But in the next few weeks, if everything goes according to prior experience from other countries, the Omicron (infections) should go down."

Noting that Vietnam is moving forward with booster shots after 80 percent of the population have been fully vaccinated, Trevisan said the severity of the disease has been much reduced thanks to the high vaccination rate.

Still, Trevisan said COVID-19 should not be regarded as harmless because even influenza can lead to death due to complications.

"We need to continue to monitor (the pandemic situation) and be flexible enough to change strategies," said Trevisan, adding that treating the disease as endemic does not mean going back completely to the old ways of living as there might be a new wave or new variant.

Le Hong Hiep, senior fellow and coordinator of the Vietnam Studies Programme at Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said it is in the government's interest to push the country's performance so it can meet its development targets, including reaching an upper-middle-income status by 2030.

Though it may not be the right time for Vietnam to treat COVID-19 as endemic, Hiep said the move toward it will not cause many problems for the economy as long as there are no large-scale lockdowns as seen last year.