Vietnam

Vietnam Orders Virus Lockdown In Ho Chi Minh City

Nine million people in Ho Chi Minh City have been ordered into lockdown, state media said Wednesday, as the commercial hub struggles to contain Vietnam's most serious COVID-19 outbreak so far.Beginning in the early hours of Friday, residents will be mandated to stay at home for two weeks after 8,000 cases were recorded in the city during the latest virus wave.Prior to this outbreak, which began in late April, fewer than 3,000 cases had been recorded across Vietnam.Although virus clusters

9 July 2021
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US Sends Vietnam 2M COVID Vaccine Doses

The United States (US) began sending Vietnam two million doses of COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday, the White House said, in its latest assistance to countries struggling to tame the pandemic.The Moderna vaccine shipment – part of a first 80 million doses that President Joe Biden has pledged to allocate worldwide – should arrive in Vietnam this weekend, a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "This is just the beginning of doses being shipped to Southeast Asia

7 July 2021
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Vietnam's Pangolin Defender Wins Top Prize

A Vietnamese conservationist working to save pangolins from the devastating multi-billion-dollar wildlife trade won a prestigious award Tuesday for his role in rescuing over a thousand of one of the world's most endangered creatures.Highly prized in China and southeast Asia for their flesh, pangolins are seen as a delicacy for the mistaken belief that they can cure anything from impotence to cancer.Nguyen Van Thai, director of Save Vietnam's Wildlife (SVW), has been at the forefront

17 June 2021
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Vietnam Urges Public To Donate For 'Vaccine Fund'

Vietnam, once a model for its successful handling of the pandemic, has started asking for public donations to buy vaccines as it struggles to contain a new coronavirus wave.The Southeast Asian country has vaccinated only about one percent of its population of nearly 100 million, and authorities have become increasingly alarmed by a recent spike in cases.Since last week, mobile phone users have received up to three text messages urging them to contribute to a COVID-19 vaccine fund, while civil

9 June 2021
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Vietnam Reverses Virus Flight Suspension

Vietnam will resume international flights to its two biggest cities, officials said Wednesday, reversing a short-lived ban imposed over fears of a new coronavirus wave.The country's COVID-19 cases have more than doubled in the past month, prompting bars, restaurants and schools to close and a rush to secure vaccines.As the country struggled to contain a virus outbreak in more than half of its territories, the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam on Monday announced a temporary suspen

3 June 2021
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Vietnam Discovers New Hybrid Virus Variant

Vietnam has discovered a new COVID-19 variant which spreads quickly by air and is a combination of the Indian and British strains, health officials confirmed Saturday.The country is struggling to deal with fresh outbreaks across more than half of its territory, including industrial zones and big cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City."We have discovered a new hybrid variant from the Indian and the UK strains," Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told a national meeting on the pande

30 May 2021
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COVID: Vietnam Races To Vaccinate Factory Workers

Vietnam began vaccinating hundreds of thousands of factory workers in its industrialised north on Thursday to combat its largest COVID-19 outbreak so far, days after the country reported a daily record in new cases.The communist country has been widely applauded for its aggressive pandemic response – with mass quarantines and strict contact tracing helping keep infection rates low – but clusters have now been reported in around half of its provinces and cities.Among the hardest hit are northe

28 May 2021
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Vietnam's Gay Parliament Candidate Seeks Change

As an LGBTQ activist, legal whizz-kid and Vietnam's first openly gay candidate running for a seat in its rubber-stamp parliament, Luong The Huy is determined to lead long-lasting change for the country's marginalised communities. Huy, 32, is one of just nine independent candidates running for Vietnam's National Assembly in elections to be held across the country on Sunday and wants to boost the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, who have long fel

21 May 2021
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Court Dismisses Agent Orange In Vietnam War Case

An elderly French-Vietnamese woman failed Monday in her bid to sue Monsanto and other makers of the toxic chemical Agent Orange over its use by the United States (US) as a weapon during the Vietnam War, after a French court ruled that the companies had legal immunity because they were working for a sovereign government.Tran To Nga, born in 1942 in what was then French Indochina, accused 14 agrochemicals firms of causing grievous harm to her and others by selling Agent Orange to the American m

12 May 2021
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Megaphone Diplomacy And The South China Sea

The South China Sea (SCS), one of the most in-demand waterways in the world, is the object of contention of several claimant-states with overlapping territorial and maritime sovereignty and sovereign rights claims over its disputed waters. The said dispute is still unresolved until today and can be dated back to the 1950s.

9 May 2021
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Vietnam Reports Cases Of Indian COVID Variant

Vietnam has detected four cases of a COVID-19 variant believed to be behind a devastating surge of the virus in India, state media said Thursday.Separately, the country also reported its first community outbreak in weeks on Thursday.Vietnam has so far kept case numbers low – reporting 2,910 of them and 35 deaths – thanks to mass quarantines and extensive contact tracing.All four of those infected with the B.1.617 variant of COVID-19, which was first found in India, had recently travelled from

30 April 2021
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Vietnam Smashes 2020 Solar Capacity Records

Once again Vietnam has set another local record in its solar sector. This time it is for rooftop solar installation. At the end of 2020, the country’s rooftop solar installations added 9.3 gigawatts (GW) to its national grid. Vietnam outdid itself with a new record by creating an eight-fold increase in rooftop solar by the end of December 2020 from only 378 megawatts (MW) in 2019.

10 April 2021
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