Deputy Prime Minister Lê Văn Thành inspects pandemic prevention efforts at the Pepperl+Fuchs at HCM City’s Tân Thuận Export Processing Zone. VNA/VNS Photo

HCM CITY — Deputy Prime Minister Lê Văn Thành has instructed businesses in HCM City’s industrial parks and export processing zones to strictly comply with COVID-19 preventive measures to ensure the safety of workers.

Inspecting pandemic prevention efforts in the city on Friday, he said: “Workers’ lives and health are firms’ most valuable assets. We cannot maintain production unless they are safe.” 

Since the number of cases had risen rapidly at industrial zones and enterprises across the south, and they had to implement the ‘3 on-site’ model of workers eating, sleeping and working on-site, workers must be tested for COVID periodically to promptly detect any cases.

“Just one infected worker can easily spread the infection to the whole production line, factory and industrial park, creating an outbreak.”

A soldier clears a barrier for a person with a travel permit on Xô Viết Nghệ Tĩnh Street in Bình Thạnh District. The city has imposed a strict policy that requires “everyone to stay at home” at all times other than allowed by authorities. VNS Photo Bồ Xuân Hiệp

A spokesperson for Germany firm Pepperl+Fuchs said 206 of the firm’s 879 employees had been staying on-site and been provided with three meals a day since July 12.

It tested them twice a week and paid 175 per cent of their normal wages, he said.

Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyễn Hồng Diên said businesses could only remain open if all workers receive at least one dose of a COVID vaccine. The city has vaccinated 86 per cent of workers so far. 

Workers must also get rapid testing done once a day and PCR testing once a week, and strictly comply with prevention regulations. 

The city plans to vaccinate all 286,000 workers and 3,000 experts at industrial parks and export processing zones, and 47,000 workers in high-tech zones.

Speaking at a meeting on Thursday Deputy PM Vũ Đức Đam said the city should try to vaccinate all people aged over 18 to achieve herd immunity as soon as possible, gradually reopen the economy and bring life back to normal.

As of Thursday the city had vaccinated 5.62 million people, with almost 237,000 getting both shots. The former include 573,771 people aged above 65 or with underlying diseases.

According to the National Centre for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, of the city’s nearly seven million people aged 18 or over, 80 per cent have received the first shot.

The HCM City Centre for Disease Control said hospitals were treating 37,993 COVID patients, including 2,321 under 16 years, 2,697 of them critically ill and on ventilators and 20 with ECMO intervention.

Almost 63,000 patients had been quarantined, monitored and treated at home, of whom 23,659 people had fully recovered but remained under mandatory 14-day home quarantine.

Another 15,854 were in quarantine facilities.

Districts had begun to speed up testing of people in red zones (extremely high-risk areas) and orange zones (high-risk) to detect infections, and so the number of cases was expected to surge in the coming days.

The country’s COVID hotspot has recorded nearly 200,000 cases since late April. 

On Monday the city began a strict policy that requires “everyone to stay at home.” — VNS 

A soldier inspects a woman’s travel papers at a checkpoint at the intersection of Phan Văn Trị Street and Phạm Văn Đồng Street in Bình Thạnh District. VNS Photo Bồ Xuân Hiệp