Doctors, nurses, inpatients, and relatives in Gia An 115 Hospital were undergoing tests on the evening of May 12 immediately after receiving the Department of Health’s direction.
At the night, Dr. Truong Vinh Long, Director of Gia An 115 Hospital, directed to supply additional personnel for the hospital's testing department to take samples soon.
More testing is needed to identify people infected with the coronavirus and their close contacts who may be infected but are not yet experiencing symptoms. Quarantining exposed people before they infect others is an important way to slow the spread of the disease; currently, most of the test samples of medical staff and relatives of patients staying at the hospital have negative results while some are waiting for test results, said Dr. Truong Vinh Long.
Medical workers in Ho Chi Minh City-based Dermatology Hospital were taking samples from their peers, inpatients and relatives of patients to test for the new coronavirus on the evening of May 12. At around 10 PM, the collection of samples was completed. Samples were sent to the city Center for Disease Control for testing overnight.
The Department of Health on May 12 issued an urgent dispatch about taking samples for testing of all medical staff, patients, and patients’ relatives in all hospitals. Collection of samples at night for medical staff on duty in the hospital and patients and caregivers.
The city Department of Health on May 13 said that it had just discovered a patient proving dishonest medical declaration at the Oncology Hospital. On May 12, a 63-years-old patient with his relatives went to the hospital for medical examination. Patients and their families who make medical declarations live in Di An Town of the Southern Province of Binh Duong. Because they said they had no symptoms of respiratory disease, they were instructed to undergo a medical examination at the medical examination department according to the hospital's procedures.
However, a doctor at the examination room carefully asked the patient's information, especially the epidemiological area, discovering that the old man is not in Binh Duong Province as per his medical declaration but in Khe Sanh town of the Central Province of Quang Tri. Worse, he had been on April 24 examined and treated at the Cancer Hospital in Hanoi, which had been under lockdown after a cluster of infections were found since May 7.
Immediately after that, the patient and his relatives were taken to the hospital's isolation ward to take samples for Covid-19 testing and cancer treatment. The test results of the patient and relatives were negative.
Dr. Nguyen Tri Dung, Director of HCDC, said that tests will be done by RT-PCR method, not a quick test; therefore, test results are highly accurate for detecting SARS-CoV-2. “This is the first time that Ho Chi Minh City has organized rapid and simultaneous testing for SARS-CoV-2 on such a large scale, said Doctor Nguyen Tri Dung.
In related news, with the increasing cases of Covid-19 nationwide, the municipal People’s Committee has instructed the police and the Department of Transport to set up 12 checkpoints at the city’s gateways by May 15 to head off any possible spread by infected visitors.
