Prognosis

Why Vietnam Took Philippines’ Spot as Worst Place to Be in Covid

Motorcyclists wait at a Covid-19 border checkpoint in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.Photographer: Maika Elan/Bloomberg
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Vietnam was once regarded as a success story in containing Covid-19, reporting only a handful of daily cases for the entire first year of the pandemic. Now it’s fallen to the bottom of Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking in December, replacing the Philippines, after a protracted delta outbreak caused deaths to spike and clouded its economic outlook.

The country’s infection rate is hitting records, with more than 10,000 cases a day for the past month, running counter to the rest of Southeast Asia where the virus has started to ebb. More than 200 deaths from Covid-19 are reported every day.