COVID Lockdown Lifted in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam… at Whose Cost?

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam’s most populous city with over 10 million people, began to lift its intensive 3-month long COVID lockdown on October 1st. This moment sparks a milestone in the country’s fight against COVID as pressure has been mounting to re-open the country’s metropolises in the wake of severe economic hardship.

As restrictions lift, citizens can now leave their homes for essential work and business functions. Unessential businesses, including bars, restaurants, karaoke bars, and massage parlors, remain closed until further notice. Simply reopening the city, however, confers much-desired autonomy over to the city’s citizens, who were unable to even leave their homes to get food and medicine during the lockdown. 

Vietnam had previously adopted the “zero-COVID” policy with the intention of mitigating COVID’s spread by tracing and prevent the disease’s geographical transmission. HCMC’s statistics reflect the unrealistic standards set by this policy with over half of the nation’s 800k cases and more than 80% of its deaths stemming from the greater HCMC area since early July. And, even though at least 70% of the city has received its first dose, moving forward with a flexible approach to containing COVID doesn’t seem quite viable given the country’s severe vaccine shortages.

As plans are drawn to transition to fully reopen, one demographic that faces particular marginalisation is HCMC’s migrant workers. Including three districts neighboring HCMC, the migrant population reaches over 3.5 million, adding to the city’s burden of vaccinating everyone and stabilising the COVID situation. Over 2 million migrants have expressed interest in leaving HCMC for their hometowns (mostly in China) during the pandemic, but Vietnamese officials have squashed requests in the name of containing the disease. Government promises to vaccinate migrants and provide unemployment relief are received lofty ambitions, raising doubts about HCMC’s capabilities to provide for all its residents during this new stage of the pandemic.

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