Page 66 - GHES-2-4

Global Health Economics and
Sustainability
Assessing Vietnam’s pandemic lockdown

2021), as illustrated in Figure 1 (Nguyen et al., 2021). was the strictest policy among all, exceeding even the
However, as new virus variants emerged, especially the restrictions of Directive No.16/CT-TTg.
highly transmissible Delta variant, the country struggled During this period, when the pandemic was raging
to respond effectively to the new wave beginning April 27, in HCM City and Southern provinces, other local
2021. As a result, the effectiveness of the disease control governments implemented additional restriction policies,
tactics diminished during this period, leading to an such as medical isolation or the refusal of returnees from
exponential increase in confirmed infection cases, rising pandemic-hit areas, to prevent the virus from spreading to
from around 200 to 17,427 between April and October
2021 (Dong et al., 2020). other areas. This study categorized these measures as the
“restriction on internal movement” policies.
To enforce these intervention policies, the Vietnamese
government issued three primary directives (No.19/ It is important to note that during this period, Vietnam’s
CT-TTg, No.16/CT-TTg, and No.15/CT-TTg), with local government pursued a dual-target strategy aimed at
governments implementing measures based on these controlling COVID-19 while supporting economic
directives. Table 1 outlines the differences between the recovery. As Prime Minister Pham (2021) stated:
three directives. “We cannot afford to commit all available resources
Among the three directives, Directive No.19/CT-TTg to fight the virus. Conversely, we cannot put the
is the least stringent, whereas Directive No.16/CT-TTg is people’s wellbeing at risk for the sake of economic
the most restrictive. As a result, Directive No.16/CT-TTg is development.”
expected to significantly reduce the spread of the coronavirus. This study measures the effectiveness of containment
However, applying Directive No.16/CT-TTg involves trade- policies in the context of local governments operating under
offs, as it mandates the closure of businesses and requires the pressure of a dual-target strategy and with COVID-19
people to stay at home, potentially causing substantial vaccines not yet available for widespread coverage. While
economic harm. According to the collected data, only 22 the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam has since been
out of 49 local administrations implemented Directive controlled through a comprehensive vaccine strategy,
No.16/CT-TTg across their entire area, with most of these in-depth studies on lockdown interventions remain
administrations located in the Mekong River Delta region. valuable for policymakers dealing with future outbreaks,
In addition to the Directives No.15/CT-TTg and No.16/ particularly when vaccine and drug development may take
CT-TTg, Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City issued two additional 1 – 2 years or longer.
policies: Directives No.10/CT-UBND and No.11/ More specifically, this research aims to analyze the
CT-UBND. On June 19, 2021, the city issued Directive impact of lockdown policies on controlling the spread of
No. 10/CT-UBND, which is stricter than Directive No.15/ the COVID-19 virus, using the metric of new infections
CT-TTg but not as strict as Directive No.16/CT-TTg. per day. Our main research question is: “How effective were
However, the number of infection cases continued to lockdown directives that were implemented at the provincial
rise sharply, and even the implementation of Directive
No.16/CT-TTg (announced on July 7, 2021) failed to halt level during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic?”
the spread of infection. Therefore, the city promulgated To answer this question, this study primarily employed
Directive No.11/CT-UBND on August 22, 2021, which interrupted time series (ITS) analysis to estimate the

Figure 1. Daily confirm new cases in Vietnam from January 23, 2020, to October 1, 2022
Source: COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University

Volume 2 Issue 4 (2024) 2 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.3423