It's generally seen as having as effective response against the pandemic. They closed borders early and have employed an effective testing and tracing strategy. Their data appears to be transparent and is corroborated by neighboring countries.
I just read this, posting the reference in another reply, seems to be a good enough summary:
"One of the reasons Vietnam was able to act so quickly and keep the case count so low is that the country experienced a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 and human cases of avian influenza between 2004 and 2010. As a result, Vietnam had both the experience and infrastructure to take appropriate action. Vietnam makes many key containment decisions in a matter of days, which may take weeks for governments in other countries to make. Although Vietnam is a highly centralized country, a number of key decisions were made at the local level, which also contributed to the swift response."
If you have any indication that the numbers are fabricated you're better off posting them (or any references at all). Otherwise you just sound like you're appealing to prejudices, like as if "south-east asian" countries couldn't possibly have had an effective epidemiologic response.
(It might not have - you might be right - still, the form of your argument is completely wrong for fruitful discussion)
I've spent time studying abroad in Vietnam so I think I can answer honestly.
One day, I went camping with some friends. We then returned to the capital and 2 days later I saw the high rise she lived in on the news. She lives in a high rise that's about 38 floors, with around 30 units per floor, so that's about 1000 units. Someone who lived somewhere in that high rise had tested positive for covid so they placed the building under a police barricade. A couple days later they limited the restrictions to only the floors the patient (zero) had been to.
Right now they're experiencing a really bad covid outbreak, and I'm not entirely confident that this isn't the big one that will lead to non-stop community transmission like in the US.
There are a ton of foreigners in the country, I know maaaany people working for embassies from western countries, if there are shady stuff going on you would hear it from them.
A recent development is that they aren't publishing the schedules of an infected person anymore. Before they use to say:
J.S who works at the Samsung Plant on 14 Main St. on the 14th of May visited the Starbucks from 2pm-3pm on Xuan Dieu street, then he visited the au co flower market from 3pm-4:30pm, and then went to Karaoke with colleagues at 54 Blueberry Lane from 5pm-9:30pm, afterwhich he took a cab home whose driver has not yet been identified.
And they would do that for every day since their suspected time of infection. So it was extremely privacy invasive but it helps with contact tracing. Now they will just announce the locations, I presume it's because there's too many new cases.
Recently in the news there was a couple who tested positive for covid but wouldn't come out of their house for 2 or 4 hours against police & health worker's demands. If you have covid, you are forced into hospitalization so you can be monitored by doctors and not infect others.
If you so much as went to the same grocery store at the same time as a covid patient you're going to get sent into centralized quarantine.
They know they can't handle millions of cases so they have to crack down hard on any cases. The death toll last week was only 30, it's these part few weeks that it's been steadily going up.
> Urbani realized that Chen's ailment was probably a new and highly contagious disease. He immediately notified the WHO, triggering a response to the epidemic (principally isolation and quarantine measures) that would end it within five months. He also persuaded the Vietnamese Health Ministry to begin isolating patients and screening travelers, thus slowing the early pace of the epidemic.
> But by the end of the two-hour meeting, the vice minister of health, Nguyen Van Thuong, had agreed to allow WHO to summon an international team of experts. He also promised to organize a task force at the ministry that would review the situation daily.
> It was, Brudon said, a "turning point."
> Vietnam's response contrasted with that of China, which for weeks tried to conceal the extent of its outbreak. But a health official in Vietnam, Le Thi Thu Ha, said her country made a simple calculation: "We needed that technical assistance," she said.
> ...
> That week, the Health Ministry set up a task force. Days later, a dozen epidemiologists and pathologists had arrived from Britain, the United States, Sweden, Germany, France and Australia.
They asked for help when they needed help, not saving face like China's handling of COVID in 2019.
Do you believe widespread and aggressive quarantine and contact tracing are an effective tool against COVID-19? 50 does seem suspicious. I am skeptical of the data. And yet, if a government (and popluation) actually went along with contact tracing and (real) quarantine, I truly believe it would be relatively straight forward to contain and stop the spread of the virus.
Last year there was a story that Vietnam had spearfished the chinese health ministry and got an idea how bad covid is in real time. That's why they locked boarders pretty fast and got away rather lightly.
It's generally seen as having as effective response against the pandemic. They closed borders early and have employed an effective testing and tracing strategy. Their data appears to be transparent and is corroborated by neighboring countries.