Ministry of Health proposes to revise the period of time without detecting new COVID-19 cases

Regarding COVID-19, on September 24, the Ministry of Health announced that it had submitted Document No. 1229/TTr-BYT to the Prime Minister on the draft decision of the Prime Minister amending the Appendix regulating the average incubation period and the time when no new cases of infectious diseases are detected as a basis for declaring the end of an infectious disease epidemic issued together with Decision No. 02/2016/QD-TTg dated January 28, 2016 stipulating the conditions for declaring an epidemic and declaring the end of an infectious disease epidemic.

In the draft proposal to amend the Appendix regulating the average incubation period and the time without detecting new cases of COVID-19, the Ministry of Health proposed that the average incubation period be reduced to 4 days and the time without detecting new cases be reduced to 8 days.

The Ministry of Health said this amendment is based on scientific grounds, the current developments of the COVID-19 situation, and recommendations from the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Also in the report, the Ministry of Health informed that the comparison between the provisions of the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases and the actual developments of the epidemic in Vietnam showed that COVID-19 no longer meets the criteria for a group A infectious disease, specifically as follows:

From the beginning of the year to August 31, 2023, 97,628 cases were recorded, with an average of about 12,000 cases recorded per month; the average monthly number of cases decreased 12 times compared to 2021 (about 144,000 cases/month) and decreased 68 times compared to 2022 (about 816,000 cases/month).

The COVID-19 mortality rate decreased from 1.86% in 2021 to 0.1% in 2022 and is currently 0.02% in 2023 (as of the end of August 2023), equivalent to or lower than the mortality rate of some common group B infectious diseases recorded in Vietnam in the past 5 years such as: dengue fever (0.022%), malaria (0.017%), diphtheria (0.102%), whooping cough (0.417%).

The causative agent of COVID-19 has been identified as the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

COVID-19 currently meets the criteria of Group B infectious diseases as prescribed in Point b, Clause 1, Article 3 of the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases: dangerous infectious diseases that can spread rapidly and can cause death.