When coronavirus first reached Vietnam in January 2020, its communist leadership undertook one of the world’s most successful containment policies. Officials likened the campaign to quash Covid-19 to fighting a war — a powerful metaphor in a country with a recent history of winning them.
By introducing strict quarantines and an exhaustive track-and-trace system — aided by the tools and personnel of a police state — the country was by mid-year able to wipe out local infections and quash any new outbreaks. Vietnam’s apparent success in restoring business as usual bolstered its pitch to foreign investors as a less geopolitically fraught alternative to China.
A year later, the more contagious Delta variant of coronavirus is bringing new infections to record levels at more than 10,000 a day, raising doubts over the future of one of Asia’s premier manufacturing centres. Nikkei Asia now ranks Vietnam joint last, in 120th place tied with Thailand, on its Covid-19 Recovery index, whose criteria includes countries’ infection management and rollout of vaccines — an area in which Vietnam failed to plan adequately.