With cases of COVID-19 also occurring in Vietnam, Nagasaki University is providing technical cooperation to the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE), which is in charge of infectious disease control. The Vietnam Research Station is located inside the NIHE in Hanoi. In late January, in response to a request from the NIHE for assistance with the introduction of a diagnostic method*, Professor Futoshi Hasebe and other members of the Vietnam Research Center provided WHO-recommended diagnostic reagents and technical cooperation on diagnostic methods**.
So far (as of February 27, 2020), about 1,200 samples have been tested using the new diagnostic method, and 12 positive cases have been confirmed in Northern Vietnam (6 returnees from Wuhan, China, 5 close contacts, and 1 3-month-old infant). The first SARS-CoV-2 virus strain in Vietnam was isolated from a pharyngeal swab of a patient in northern Vietnam.
The Vietnam Research Station will continue to cooperate with the NIHE and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Vietnam.
Photo: The SARS-CoV-2 strain isolated from a Vietnamese COVID-19 patient who returned from Wuhan, China on Feb. 6
* Real time RT-PCR
** At the same time, we were collaborating with the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo and introduced the real-time RT-PCR and Nested-RT-PCR methods for the diagnosis of the novel coronavirus developed independently by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.
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