The Miss Vietnam pageant has been suspended indefinitely over the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) fear, organizers told Tuoi Tre (newspaper) on Wednesday.

The beauty contest was scheduled to start in May but COVID-19’s complicated developments have driven the organizers to delay it till an unknown date, a spokesperson said.

It was slated to last from May to August, with a press conference scheduled for March.

“This is a sensitive moment when our country is struggling to curb the COVID-19 epidemic,” Le Xuan Son, chief organizer, was quoted by the spokesperson as saying.

“So we have decided to postpone Miss Vietnam even when everything has been prepared."

The contest is still receiving applications but a new date is up in the air, Son said.

“This uncertainty is our biggest challenge,” he added.

“But we still have to be ready to organize the beauty pageant in time, depending on the complications of the epidemic.”

First held in 1988, the 2020 Miss Vietnam competition should be the 16th edition.

This is a national beauty pageant for women aged 18 to 27.

The current Miss Vietnam titleholder is Tran Tieu Vy, who was crowned on September 16, 2018 in Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam has confirmed 35 COVID-19 patients so far, with 16 having fully discovered and been discharged from the hospital by February 26.

The other 19, including eight Vietnamese, nine British citizens, one Mexican, and one Irish national, are being treated in isolated hospital wards.

Patient No. 17, a resident in Hanoi, was confirmed on Friday last week after Vietnam had reported no new infection since February 13.

About a dozen positive cases have been traced to this female patient, as they had traveled on the same plane from London that landed at Noi Bai International Airport in the Vietnamese capital on March 2.

She seemed to conceal her trips to Italy and France to dodge mandatory quarantine when carrying out immigration procedures at Noi Bai.   

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