HCMC – The HCMC Center for Disease Control (HCDC) reported yesterday, September 1, that more than 91,000 Covid-19 patients are receiving home-based care, nearly 21,000 are staying at concentrated quarantine centers and over 40,000 are under treatment at hospitals citywide.
Among the patients under home-based care, over 64,700 have been self-quarantining at home since they were confirmed positive for the coronavirus, soaring threefold against last weekend’s figure at 22,000. Over 26,700 others are self-isolating at home after they were discharged from hospitals.
The sharp increase in new Covid patients is attributed to the city’s mass testing since August 23 to detect silent carriers of the virus in the community.
To help in the home-based care for Covid patients, the HCMC Department of Health has readied 150,000 bags of medicine and proposed purchasing an additional 200,000 bags. HCMC Children’s Hospital 1 is tasked with buying and preparing these bags of medication. Yesterday, the hospital handed over 200,000 bags to 22 districts and Thu Duc City, exceeding the original target of 150,000 bags.
The city, which is currently the biggest coronavirus hotspot in Vietnam in the fourth wave of infections, is focusing on two main anti-Covid strategies: intensifying home- and community-based care for Covid patients and improving the testing capacity at hospitals.
Regarding the first task, the city has continued to equip 411 pop-up healthcare stations and 312 rapid response teams, speed up the distribution of medicine bags and issue home-based care guidelines for Covid patients.
At local hospitals in the city, the number of severely- and critically-ill Covid patients is on the rise, with more than 2,700 cases relying on ventilators and 18 others requiring ECMO support.
ICU Centers continued to upgrade their treatment capacity, while field hospitals and Covid treatment units also rushed to increase the number of oxygen beds and equipment to treat severely-ill patients.
Since the fourth wave of Covid-19 began striking the country in late April, HCMC has reported over 221,000 domestic infections. The city on August 31 reported 2,752 new recoveries, sending the total in the year to date to 110,269. Yesterday, it recorded 335 new deaths, bringing the total to more than 9,000.
