Ho Chi Minh City: Businesses adjusting to new normal

Illustrative photo.

Enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City, the locality hardest hit in the fourth wave of COVID-19, have been adjusting to the “new normal” after around 100 days the city applied social distancing measures.

The COVID-19 situation in southern hub has been basically kept under control, Deputy Health Minister Do Xuan Tuyen said, the city’s resilience against the pandemic has been improved, particularly in preventive medicine and primary care.

HCM City is one of the localities with the highest and fastest coverage rate of vaccines against COVID-19. So far, 100 percent of people aged 18 and older in the city have received at least one dose and nearly 90 percent have been fully vaccinated with two jabs, according to Tuyen.

He said the government’s current strategy is to provide maximum protection to the public health, minimise death toll, help enterprises maintain stable business and production, and improve social welfare services for people.

Assoc. Prof., Dr. Tran Hoang Ngan, Director of the HCM City Development Research Institute, also applauded local enterprises for their efforts to overcome hardships, saying production has quickly returned to normal after the city shifted to the state of flexibly and safely living with the virus.

To date, 88 projects at the Saigon Hi-tech Park, which employ around 48,000 workers, have resumed production, while production has been restored in 99.7 percent of 1,414 companies in the city’s industrial parks and export processing zones with up to 280,000 workers, Ngan said.

The enterprises have been busy with fulfilling orders from the US and Europe for the festive season, she noted.

After hardly hit by the fourth coronavirus wave, businesses are better aware that restructuring is not optional, and it is important to revise work process and arrange online and offline shifts, said Tran Viet Anh, Vice Chairman of the HCM City Export Processing Zone and Industrial Park Authority Business Association and Chairman and CEO of Nam Thai Son Export Import JSC.

HCM City’s companies have been adapting to different aspects of the “new normal,” with most of them given better understanding in health safety rules and procedures. About 70 percent of local enterprises and some 90 percent of those in manufacturing have at least a qualified health worker who are capable of recognising signs and symptoms of COVID-19./.