United Việt Nam fights COVID-19 as outbreak in HCM City worsens

Hồ Chí Minh City is not feeling well.

The most vibrant and economically wealthy city in Việt Nam has offered financial aid to help people whose incomes have been slashed due to the city's 14-day lockdown.

City officials have worked out a plan to provide self-employed workers, including street hawkers, lottery ticket sellers and motorbike taxi drivers, with a one-time payment of VNĐ2 million. Pregnant women and women raising children under six years old will receive VNĐ1 million more. 

All people whose working contracts had to be suspended for more than 30 days will also be eligible for financial aid. 

Another financial proposal is to support small business owners, including grocery store owners in markets that have been shut down to prevent further disease spread, for between one and three months. 

According to the municipal People's Committee, a support fund with VNĐ886 billion ($38.5 million) has been set up to disburse funding to 80,000 workers whose jobs have been suspended, 230,000 self-employed workers, and local pandemic fighting staff as well as quarantined people. 

When HCM City coughs, the whole country feels the cold. Its daily number of positive cases this week has been consistently above 1,000 and topped 2,000 on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Health continues to send medical teams with doctors and other health personnel to help HCM City fight the pandemic. More than 7,000 medical students have been added to the health force to start work in the city's quarantine camps and hospitals.

Deputy Minister of Health Nguyễn Trường Sơn has said that the ministry will trial home quarantine for positive cases (F0) and their close contacts (F1) in HCM City. 

Even though he has said this is only an "experiment", virologists are concerned if not strictly controlled this could spread the virus to the community.

Doctors and other medical workers have been exhausted for the past week, but help has been coming in many ways.

On Thursday morning, the Ministry of Health sent 10,000 medical personnel to help HCM City. Other provinces with prior experience in treating COVID-19 patients also sent their medical workers to give a hand, from nearby Bình Thuận, or farther like Quảng Nam and Nghệ An and even Hải Phòng and Nam Định in the north.

Việt Nam's biggest makeshift hospital to treat COVID-19 patients was put together in 72 hours from four abandoned apartment buildings in the Thủ Thiêm relocation residential area in HCM City. 

Dr Phan Minh Hoàng, medical director on-site reportedly said: "We're all trying to put what we have together, please give a hand, or just bear with us. In only a couple of days, we shall get the hospital functioning smoothly!"

On the grassroots level, people around the country have been sending what they deem important to their fellow countrymen and women, who were always generous in helping those people in need.

Donations have been channelled via the city's Buddhist pagoda network to cook meals for people in quarantine.

People in the central provinces have collected fruit and vegetables to send south./.