Virus dance bats for hand-washing

Hanoi, March 3: Homemade videos featuring a catchy Vietnamese song and an accompanying dance about the necessity of hand-washing during the Covid-19 crisis have racked up more than 2 million views on video app TikTok. Cribbing the tune from pop song “Jealous” — or “Ghen” in Vietnamese — by singers Erik and Min, the Ministry of Health released an animated video with lyrics telling its citizens to “push back the virus Corona, Corona”.

The unlikely earworm by a usually staid Communist government drew hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube, and was also featured on HBO’s comedic news show “Last Week Tonight”, with host John Oliver calling it a “genuine clubbanger”. In Vietnam, the nation’s youth have taken to TikTok performing hand-washing dance moves, making sure to rub inbetween their fingers and their fingernails — which health professionals have recommended. Spin-offs include office workers grooving at their desks and even people dressed in the Hmong ethnic minority outfits dancing in front of a waterfall.

“The remote village also prevents and fights the epidemic,” read the caption on a video featuring the Hmong couple. Popularised by dancer and internet personality Qang Dang, who has 300,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, he and another dancer performed it with light-hearted swagger on a street with food vendors. It was tagged with the government-issued hashtag #ghencovychallenge, and Dang’s original video has been viewed more than 1.1 million times.