The Vietnamese Ministry of Health excluded more than 6,000 pediatric COVID-19 cases that were identified through rapid testing in Ho Chi Minh City from its official count, according to the municipal Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health Tang Chi Thuong held a meeting on Tuesday to explain that the city had identified more than 6,000 coronavirus infections among students at 201 schools from February 14 to 20, equal to about 1,000 cases per day.

However, a daily report released by the health ministry showed that the southern metropolis documented less than 1,000 infections a day that week and 1,300-1,400 patients on Tuesday and Wednesday.

CDC deputy director Nguyen Hong Tam explained at a press conference on Thursday that the 6,000 pediatric COVID-19 cases were identified using rapid antigen test kits but failed to meet other criteria for a ‘confirmed case’ under the health ministry’s current regulations. 

A confirmed COVID-19 case, according to a new definition, is one belonging to one of the following categories:

A person who has tested positive for the coronavirus by detection of viral genetic material, or a real-time RT-PCR method.

     + A person who is a close contact of a positive case and has a positive antigen rapid test result

     + A person who has a positive antigen rapid test result and shows either clinical signs of suspected COVID-19 or is linked to outbreak sites

     + A person who has a positive antigen rapid test result twice in a row, with the second taken within eight hours of the first

Meanwhile, a person who has solely a positive antigen rapid test result is merely considered a suspected case.

“Most of the infections detected at schools are suspected cases as per the definition of the Ministry of Health, so they are not counted in the ministry’s official tally,” Tam said.

He added that the municipal Department of Health and the Department of Education and Training are handling the suspected cases the same way they do confirmed ones.

Hospitals across the city are currently treating 2,171 COVID-19 patients, including 144 children under 16 years old, 44 critically-ill patients on ventilators, and ten needing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a type of outside-the-body life support, according to the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control.

Ho Chi Minh City has detected over 526,000 infections since the fourth virus wave broke out in Vietnam on April 27, 2021.

The metropolis of nine million people has gradually resumed socio-economic activities since early October last year after being placed under strict lockdown for nearly six months. The city welcomed students back to school on February 14.

More than 7.8 million adults in the city have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose while over 7.5 million of them have been jabbed twice, according to the national COVID-19 vaccination portal.

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