Vietnam: Localities without any cases of Corona may allow students to return to school

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Officially, in response to Official Dispatch 327/BGDDT-GDTC dated February 7, 2020 of the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam regarding professional opinions on the conditions and criteria for allowing students to be absent from school, the Ministry of Health of Vietnam has the following opinions:

- For areas without the epidemic: students may return to school after disinfection and sanitization of classrooms, cleaning of desks and chairs, ensuring hygiene conditions for disease prevention (clean water and soap), guiding students, parents, and teachers on methods of disease prevention and measures to prevent nCoV transmission, ensuring no nCoV transmission occurs within the school.

The Ministry of Health requests the Ministry of Education and Training to direct schools to include the teaching program about nCoV in the curriculum to help students understand disease prevention.

- For areas reporting cases of the disease: continue monitoring the situation and only allow students to return to school after disinfection and sanitization of classrooms, cleaning of desks and chairs, ensuring disease prevention conditions for students, and after any Corona-infected cases have been isolated for 14 days without new cases emerging.

Additionally, the Ministry of Health previously issued Decision 322/QD-BYT on issuing Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute respiratory infections due to the novel Coronavirus strain (2019-nCoV).

Patients infected with 2019-nCoV exhibit a range of clinical manifestations: from asymptomatic infections, flu-like symptoms, to severe conditions like severe pneumonia and respiratory failure. Specifically, symptom progression in Corona virus-infected patients is as follows:

- Most patients exhibit mild fever, cough, fatigue, no pneumonia, and often recover on their own after about a week;

- Some cases may progress to pneumonia, severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), septic shock, acid-base imbalance, multi-organ dysfunction leading to death. The average time from initial symptoms to severe progression is usually around 7-8 days;

- Mortality is higher among the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, and those with chronic underlying conditions.

Relevant provisions can be found in Official Dispatch 327/BGDDT-GDTC and Decision 322/QD-BYT.

Nguyen Trinh

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