EU countries have an interest in promoting post-pandemic recovery in Vietnam, as it is the bloc’s largest trading partner in Southeast Asia. The EU also expects to gain a geopolitical position in the Indo-Pacific region, according to DW.
Italy and Romania last week became the latest European countries to donate Covid-19 vaccines to Vietnam. In the past weeks, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and France have all donated vaccines to Hanoi.
DW estimates that to date, EU countries have funded or committed to provide a total of 2.6 million doses of vaccine to Vietnam – a key player in Asian politics.
In addition, Vietnam is the country that receives a large amount of vaccines from the COVAX program. This program has received about a third of all vaccine aid from EU countries through the “European Group” initiative. Carl Thayer, professor emeritus from the University of New South Wales in Australia, told DW: “European countries may have different motives, which is a combination of national interest and altruism.”
Promoting domestic vaccines
As of August 30, only 2.6% of Vietnam’s population has been fully immunized with the Covid-19 vaccine, the lowest rate in Southeast Asia. This is in large part because earlier this year, the Vietnamese government chose to focus on domestic vaccine development, which is expected to be on the market in early 2022. On the other hand, experts have also accused the Vietnamese government of “arrogance” after Vietnam did not seem to urgently buy a vaccine at the early stage when the epidemic was well controlled and when there was no Delta strain, according to the article of Deutsche Welle.
Call for foreign aid
Le Hong Hiep, senior fellow of the Vietnam Studies Program at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, told DW that Vietnamese officials at home and abroad have been actively campaigning for vaccine donations. During a meeting with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on June 1, Ambassador Giorgio Aliberti, Head of the EU Delegation to Vietnam, is said to have promised to assist in securing vaccine supplies from European governments.
EU ‘pays off debt’
There is also a feeling that the people of Europe are now giving back to the charitable activities that Vietnam carried out when the pandemic swept their country last year.
For example, in April 2020, Vietnam donated more than 550,000 masks to France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. The Vietnamese community is especially active in countries such as the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Poland. All four countries have now donated vaccines to Vietnam, DW said. According to BBC News Vietnamese, the Vietnamese community in these countries has responded to the movement to help the host country during their fight against the epidemic in 2020.
Economic engine
But analysts suspect that European governments are not only out of altruism but also for economic benefit, thus needing Vietnam to recover quickly from the pandemic. And this requires widespread vaccination, according to DW. Vietnam is currently the EU’s 15th largest trading partner and the largest in Southeast Asia, an area in which Brussels aspires to develop economic and geopolitical interests. The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement – the second trade agreement that Brussels has signed with a Southeast Asian country after the previous free trade agreement with Singapore – comes into force in mid-2020. Le Thu Huong of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted that US companies including Nike, Adidas and Apple, whose supply chains in Vietnam have been affected by the increase in infections, have lobbied the government. The United States sponsors vaccines for Vietnam. The US then provided millions of doses of vaccine to Vietnam.
The situation of Covid-19 epidemic in Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are still hot spots of the country in the number of infections. The regulations on travel papers, the policy of going to the market, the prolonged strict blockade… are controversial inadequacies in the community. Vietnamese media said that on September 8, the Ministry of Health sent a telegram to 23 provinces and cities directly under the central government, requesting “fast testing on a large scale”. Accordingly, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and other provinces on the list will conduct testing for everyone in their areas. Depending on the high-risk or very high-risk areas, testing every 2-3 days or every 5-7 days. Funding for implementation is from ‘city budget,’ according to Tuoi Tre. There have been some comments from experts against mass testing. Professor Nguyen Van Tuan from the University of News South Wales, Australia, told the BBC that this is a very expensive strategy while the effectiveness is not high, due to the high false-positive and false-negative test results, which do not guarantee success. is the goal of accurately dissecting the F0. He suggested that testing should only be focused on two main groups of people: the elderly with underlying medical conditions, and those with symptoms.