A national ceremony will be held to pay tribute to people who have lost their lives to COVID-19 in Vietnam, according to National Assembly (NA) Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue.

The Vietnam Fatherland Front will coordinate with Ho Chi Minh City and relevant localities to organize the ceremony. 

The event will take place virtually, Hue told the ongoing second session of the 15th legislature on Thursday morning.

“This is the desire of many lawmakers,” Hue said.

The lawmakers also suggested that the NA choose August 22 as the day of commemoration because Vietnam recorded the highest number of deaths caused by COVID-19 on that day this year.

Official statistics only show that 737 people died of COVID-19 on August 21 and 22, including 599 in Ho Chi Minh City, with no separate death toll reported for August 22.

To date, the Southeast Asian country has documented over 22,800 coronavirus-related fatalities nationwide.

NA Chairman Hue said that the pandemic has upended production and business activities, livelihoods, employment, and the lives of people and companies, with more than 1.3 million people leaving Ho Chi Minh City and key economic hubs in the southern region to return home, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

The top legislator proposed that the government and cabinet members should analyze, evaluate, and have an overall solution to restore and develop the labor market, and create jobs for internal migrant workers as they have come back to their hometowns. 

Hue asked for efforts to provide social welfare support packages to assist affected employees and ensure that everyone can gain the most convenient and fastest access to those packages. 

He emphasized the need to strengthen the protection of children’s rights, especially those orphaned by the pandemic.

The fourth wave of coronavirus infections, which flared up in Vietnam on April 27 and has become the most challenging the nation has ever faced, has caused 995,903 community-based transmissions in all 63 provinces and cities.

Ho Chi Minh City is the biggest epicenter with 443,815 patients, including 16,925 fatalities.

Vietnam has found 1,000,897 infections since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it early last year.

Health workers have administered more than 95.5 million vaccine doses since inoculation was rolled out on March 8, with over 32 million people having received two injections.

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