Vietnam classifies infections into A, B, and C classes, mostly according to their severity.
Group A includes highly dangerous infectious diseases that can spread rapidly, and widely, and have a high death rate or the cause of the disease is not yet known.
Examples are Polio, Avian influenza A-H5N1, Plague, Haemorrhagic fever caused by Ebola, Lassa or Marburg viruses, West Nile fever, Yellow fever, Cholera, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, and new dangerous infectious diseases that have newly emerged with unknown/unclear pathogens.
Class B includes dangerous infectious diseases that can be rapidly transmittable and fatal, which include Adenovirus disease, Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), Influenza, Rabies, Whooping cough (pertussis), Tuberculosis, Shigellosis, Mumps, Dengue fever, Malaria, Measles, Hand-foot-mouth disease, Anthrax, Smallpox, Typhoid fever, Rubella, Viral hepatitis, Viral encephalitis, and Zika.
While Class C embraces less dangerous and not rapidly transmittable infectious diseases, which include chlamydia.
The Minister of Health has the competence to revise the list of infectious diseases in each class.
According to Tran Dac Phu, former Director of the Preventive Medicine Department and Senior Advisor to the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre under the Ministry of Health, the Covid-19 situation in Vietnam is still under control, with the majority of new cases having mild or no symptoms, and the healthcare system is not being overloaded.
Thanks to the high vaccination rate, Vietnam has moved on to flexible, safe and effective adaptation and control of Covid-19 since late 2021.
However, Phu stressed that Covid-19 still has its unique characteristics as the WHO has not declared the end of this pandemic and the body still advises countries to be cautious and shift from emergency response to sustainable and long-term disease control strategies.
According to the Ministry of Health's statistics, Vietnam has recorded over 11.60 million Covid-19 infections, with total recoveries logged at 10.64 million. Over 43,200 deaths have been attributed to Covid-19, about 0.4 percent of the total caseload.
More than 266.4 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered across the country.
