Ugh, it's back — VietEcon

I write in sadness. Truly. There has been a big spike in COVID cases in Vietnam. Now, the number of cases is still quite low at 11, but the country was doing so well!

Repercussions:

Stock market crashes: VN-Index (for the HCMC exchange) is down 5.31% today after being down 3.22% on Friday (driven by…I can’t really remember, probably COVID in the rest of the world, plus US-China spats, plus it being 2020). Total decline in those 2 days is 9.1%.

Da Nang measures: Quarantine for 12,000 people. Extensive testing, centered around a hospital in the city. A good chance that there will be more lockdowns until the government gets it under control. Hong Kong just banned meetings of more than 2 people.

Domestic tourism crashing again: Da Nang is obviously a big tourism center, and domestic tourists already made a majority of visitors in 2018 and 2019. (Caveat: foreigners spend more.) But still there was some hope that part of 2020 could be saved by strong domestic tourism. The government has been promoting it.

Now the government is evacuating 80,000 tourists from the city.

Foreign affairs: I have not seen anything definite about where the virus came from. The government allows few international flights, and all of these people are being centrally quarantined. But maybe one of them tested negative but was carrying it. Seems unlikely, but maybe.

However, there have been some cases of smuggling people over the border. If it is determined that one of these people smuggled brought the virus, then it really is going to be a mess. The Vietnamese people are not going to be happy. The world is ready to blow, so let’s hope this doesn’t add to it.

Strong response: It really is a shame that this is happening but what makes me optimistic is that this is a full-court press by the Vietnamese government to get this under control. I am hearing that people that have been to Danang over the past few days (but that have left) are self-quarantining. If true, this would be good news.

Ultimately, I am optimistic that the government will get this new outbreak under control, because they are doing so much and very quickly. But the virus doesn’t care what you hope.