Mr. Phuc said that after 99 days of no COVID-19 community infections, a new outbreak appeared last month, affecting a number of localities and causing several deaths. Da Nang, Hoi An, and Buon Me Thuot have imposed social distancing measures.

The Prime Minister has worked with authorities in  the central region, the southeastern region, and the Mekong Delta to boost growth by facilitating public investment capital disbursement.

He called on every family, commune, and village to be an anti-epidemic fortress and on every citizen to be a soldier on the epidemic prevention front.

“The beginning of August will be decisive in determining the scale of the COVID-19 breakout. All sectors and localities must exert a maximal effort to contain and fight the epidemic. It’s vital for us to prevent COVID-19 from spreading on a large scale. All necessary resources must be mobilised to serve epidemic control efforts in major hotspots like Da Nang,” said PM Phuc.

According to Mr. Phuc, despite the global economic crisis caused by COVID-19, international organisations and financial institutions still have optimistic assessments of the Vietnamese economy.

The World Bank forecast last Thursday that Vietnam will come fifth in the world in economic growth with 2.8% in 2020 and 6.8% in 2021.