What Israel Can Learn From Vietnam on How to Beat the Coronavirus
An Israeli doctor who’s leading the Southeast Asian country’s fight explains how it succeeded in quickly containing the epidemic – for now at least
Rafi Kot, an Israeli physician who has an unexpected role as a key decision maker in Vietnam’s efforts to cope with the new coronavirus, admits the country was taken by surprise by the epidemic.
But three weeks after its first case was confirmed, it seems the Southeast Asian country has achieved something South Korea and Italy have not, by containing the virus. Vietnam has had no confirmed cases since February 13, and all 16 people who were infected have recovered.
“It’s an enigmatic disease,” Kot said in an interview, explaining the challenges health officials in Vietnam faced and those in Israel may be facing in the weeks ahead. Excerpts from the interview appear below.
“First, the biggest problem is that the coronavirus was the perfect epidemic because it happened just as millions of Chinese and Vietnamese were traveling for Chinese New Year. That was a major factor in its spread. Second, it’s different because in contrast to SARS, for example, it infects people long before they show symptoms. A large number of patients have no idea they’re sick and continue to go around and spread it.”
A family doctor, Kot has lived in Vietnam for 32 years. “I built the first health care system for the tribes of North Vietnam and the northern delta in 1988. Afterward, I spent a year in North Korea during the great famine. Then I returned to Vietnam and opened a network of clinics in the country,” he said.
Today, Kot is an important figure in Vietnam’s health care system, part of a small team making the decisions about the country’s response to the new coronavirus.
“I advise the Vietnamese government and during the coronavirus epidemic I’ve been responsible for the part of the team making decisions in connection with Greater Saigon, a population of 20 million people,” he says. “We meet almost daily, sometimes several times a day and sometimes in the middle of the night.”
Why was Vietnam unprepared?
“It began a little after Chinese New Year, at the end of January. We knew about the coronavirus in China, but we were pretty calm. We’ve been through so many coronaviruses, like SARS, swine flu and avian flu, we had built a team and a system, but we didn’t relate to it. After SARS we thought it couldn’t get any worse because SARS was so terrible: The first patient died in Vietnam, as did the doctor who treated him.”
Tourist traps
Why only Saigon and not the rest of the country?
“The war on the coronavirus is being fought by province. Korean tourists visit several major places in Vietnam and ignore the other 90 per cent, so we’re concerned with places with big, urban populations and cosmopolitan traffic – Chinese, tourists from other countries, etc.”
More after the jump
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