Ministry of Health explains reason for declaring end of COVID-19 epidemic

On the afternoon of June 3, at the 20th meeting of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, it was agreed to move COVID-19 from group A infectious disease to group B infectious disease, and at the same time, issued guidelines on applying COVID-19 prevention and control measures appropriate to group B diseases and recommendations of the World Health Organization to develop a plan for sustainable control and management of COVID-19 for the 2023-2025 period in accordance with the new situation.

Ministry of Health explains the reason for declaring the end of the Covid-19 epidemic, picture 1 — COVID-19 is no longer a group A infectious disease (TL photo).

According to the Ministry of Health, the basis for declaring the end of the COVID-19 epidemic is the provisions of the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases and through monitoring the epidemic's developments in Vietnam, showing that COVID-19 no longer meets the criteria for a group A infectious disease.

The Ministry of Health proposed applying the provisions of Clause 2, Article 3 of the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases to adjust COVID-19 from group A to group B.

Also according to the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization believes that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is still a virus with a fast transmission rate.

However, in Vietnam, the current number of cases has decreased 8.5 times compared to 2021, decreased 48 times compared to 2022 (from the beginning of 2023 to May 29, 2023, 85,493 cases were recorded, with an average of 17,000 cases recorded per month).

In addition, the COVID-19 mortality rate in the first 5 months of 2023 decreased sharply to 0.02% compared to the mortality rate in 2021 of 1.86%, in 2022 of 0.1%, equivalent to or lower than the mortality rate of some 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%).

“COVID-19 currently meets the criteria for a group B infectious disease as prescribed in Point b, Clause 1, Article 3 of the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases: Group B includes dangerous infectious diseases that can spread rapidly and can cause death” - according to analysis in the report of the Ministry of Health.

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