Lockdown eases; no virus-related deaths

Offering a rare and surprising bright spot in the Covid-19 pandemic, Vietnam began easing its nationwide lockdown yesterday following an aggressive containment campaign that has meant few infections and no deaths in an Asian nation initially believed to be at great risk from the coronavirus. The communist-ruled country has sealed its borders, quarantined masses of people, used soldiers and police to track down potential infections and fined social media users for spreading misinformation. After deploying the full arsenal of a singleparty state, the sprawling nation of 95 million people has now gone a full week without recording a new infection. But despite their effectiveness, Vietnam’s measures are not easily replicable. Its intolerance of dissent and ability to mobilise an entire security and political apparatus – steps more common in China – meant its campaign met little of the pushback seen in Western liberal democracies. And experts caution that the fight isn’t over. Vietnam allowed residents across the country to resume small gatherings and restarted buses, taxis and regular domestic flights for the first time in three weeks. But with much of Southeast Asia still under lockdown, people must continue wearing masks in public, gatherings of more than 20 remain off-limits, schools will stay closed for several more weeks and international flights are still grounded, officials said. ‘‘Many parts of the world are still infected, so the risk is not over for us,’’ Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said. Since the government imposed a partial nationwide lockdown April 1, Vietnam saw only a modest increase in coronavirus cases to 268, with all but 44 recovered and no fatalities. –