As the Covid-19 outbreak rages globally and Vietnam confronts a spate of new cases, a new app and website have been rolled out to aid the monitoring of people's health in the country.
According to Tuoi Tre, the NCOVI app is available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, and can be used by both residents of Vietnam and foreign visitors to declare their health status. It was introduced by the National Steering Committee for Disease Prevention Covid-19. The government has also mandated that all visitors entering Vietnam via air travel need to fill out a health declaration form.
The health declaration form is currently available in 10 languages, including Vietnamese, English, Chinese, Korean, Italian and Khmer. It asks foreign arrivals for their travel history within the last 14 days and whether they have had symptoms such as a fever, cough or sore throat within that same time span. Anyone arriving from overseas must fill out the form. The form is also available online.
The newspaper reports that the form is not yet mandatory for residents of Vietnam, but it is encouraged. Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam spoke at the NCOVI app launch, and stressed that any personal information submitted to the program would remain confidential.
App users can also report suspected cases, view Vietnam's epidemic map and receive updates on the outbreak from the government.
The country has seen a relative surge in new cases recently, with infection numbers increasing from 16 to 34, at the time of writing, since last Friday. Prior to that, no new cases had been reported in Vietnam in over three weeks.
