Author: Editorial Board (Editorial Board)

HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam’s most gravely-ill COVID-19 patient, a British pilot who works for its national airline, has started to recover from the illness and may no longer require a lung transplant, state media said on Wednesday. Full story: https://whtc.com/news/articles/2020/jun/03/vietnam-says-most-serious-covid-19-patient-on-path-to-recovery/1025074/

Vietnam’s political stage is heating up again after the country’s internationally-lauded success in containing COVID-19. On 11 May 2020, the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam began its three-day 12th plenum in Hanoi to discuss who among ‘strategic-level cadres’ are qualified to be elected to its three leading central bodies — the Central Committee, Politburo and Secretariat.

There is no time when speed matters more than when a pandemic strikes. What’s unfolding with the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide speaks volumes to this. First detected in China last December, the novel coronavirus has travelled to 209 countries and territories globally, infected more than 1.9 million and claimed lives of more than 120,000 people at the time of this writing.

Hanoi, May 31 (Prensa Latina) Vietnam is now 45 days free of indigenous cases of Covid-19 and remains one of the few countries that, despite reporting more than 300 sick people, is free of deaths. The native infections have been absolutely cut off since April 16, because all the new cases (188) are Vietnamese repatriated from other nations where the epidemiological situation is complicated.

As special repatriation flights continue in the midst of border closures, a rather unique flight took place on Friday from Taipei (Taiwan) to Da Nang (Vietnam). Of the 343 Vietnamese citizens being repatriated, 243 of them were pregnant women – some of whom were getting close to their due dates.

China’s aggression in the South China Sea poses an economic and security threat for nations with exclusive economic zones in that region along with their many trade partners. “To confront the danger, Vietnam openly begins cooperation with the Quad, ostensibly to manage the Covid-19 threat,” explains Nguyen Quang Dy, researcher, journalist and retired Vietnamese diplomat based in Hanoi. “Still, the United States, Japan, Australia and India formed the Quad in 2007 to confront China’s rising power.” The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’s founding members have raised the possibility of expansion to Vietnam along with South Korea and New Zealand. While potential members pointedly resist antagonizing Asia’s largest economy with notions of containment, they do want to end the belligerence. A recent survey shows a majority of ASEAN respondents support the Quad for playing a role in regional security. Vietnam could also consider defense cooperation with a major power like the United States, cooperation agreements with other regional powers or an international court case over South China Sea territorial claims. – YaleGlobal