Vietnam Beats COVID-19 Because of People’s Trust, Timely Assistance

Vietnam successfully prevents COVID-19 because of the people’s trust in the methods and timely and correct assistance to the people, especially vulnerable ones, according to a report of the Mekong Development Research Institute (MDRI). The MDRI made the research to answer the Asia Foundation’s question about how Vietnam fails to force people to comply with traffic rules but succeeded in making citizens following anti-COVID-19 rules. The research was backed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Australian Aid. The MDRI particularly stressed that many researchers and newspapers used to doubt Vietnam’s achievements, giving an example that a newspaper reached funeral houses in Vietnam to understand the situation in Vietnam. The MDRI listed the people’s high trust in the anti-COVID-19 methods, at 89%, as the first reason. The MDRI noted that foreigners’ doubts are understandable, explaining that the Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) showed that transparency is among the weakest performance in Vietnam. The MDRI then surveyed 10% of 14,000 PAPI responders. The result is that constant dissemination is the key, as 74% of responders heard about COVID-19 daily, 16.3% heard weekly, 8.9% heard rarely. Only 1% never heard about COVID-19. Besides, 98% emphasized that they trust in the accuracy of news about COVID-19. The MDRI then clarified the second reason of support for vulnerable people. The MDRI informed that only one-third of respondents answered that their family economies were not affected by COVID-19. Hence, the government’s support, including a package of VND62 trillion ($2.66 billion), was appreciated. However, the MDRI said that the support still failed to cover everyone, such as 36% of poor households have yet to reach the support, or 19% of non-poor households questionably gained the support. Hence, the key methods were the people’s tradition of saving money, the MDRI implied. The MDRI also emphasized a trend that rural and more knowledgeable people have higher support to the government’s anti-COVID-19 methods, and vice versa. (Tia Sang, tiasang, mdri)