Amy Searight, senior adviser and director of the Southeast Asia Program at the CSIS (Photo: Zing)

“Singapore and Vietnam got off to a very early start in responding to the initial outbreak,” said Senior Adviser and Director of CSIS’s Southeast Asia Program Amy Searight.  “Vietnam has weathered the epidemic remarkably well, with only 268 cases out of a population of 95.5 million people and not a single reported death.” 
In the early stage of the pandemic, Vietnam shuttered non-essential businesses and schools and enacted large-scale quarantining. Vietnam’s monitoring and surveillance of citizens has been supported by the Government’s extensive network of informants, which has helped identify and quarantine those suspected of infection and those who have been in contact with them, Searight explained.