A British man with a 10-year history of lymphoma cancer has been discharged from hospital after making a full recovery from COVID-19.
He is the 146th patient to be given the all-clear. Upon his release the man’s wife, who also made a full recovery from the disease, praised the medical staff.
“I would like to express my sincere thank to the Vietnamese doctors,” she said. “They are very amazing!”
On Tuesday morning, the Ministry of Health said no new cases of coronavirus had been detected overnight, with the total number of infections nationwide remaining at 265. More than half have been treated and discharged.
The latest patient to leave hospital is a 74-year-old man from the UK who came to Vietnam with his wife last month. She also tested positive for the virus.
On March 27 while being treated at the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases he suffered severe respiratory failure and was sent to the intensive care unit where he was put on a ventilator.
Doctors fought for a week as the man’s health deteriorated rapidly.
By April 5 he started to respond to treatment and began breathing without the need for oxygen.
Two further tests for COVID-19 taken on April 8 and 10 both produced negative results and he was eventually told he could go home.
His wife said: “We were sent to the National Tropical Diseases Hospital when I coughed a lot and had some breathing troubles. But after a period of treatment, I had three tests with negative results for SARS-CoV-2 and had recovered”
“When I learned that my husband was in the intensive care unit, as a nurse, I knew he was in very critical and life-threatening condition. But the Vietnamese doctors are amazing, they have saved our lives.”
The British patient who recovered from COVID-19 and was discharged from the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases late night on April 13, with his wife and medical staff. — Photo courtesy of the hospital
The couple left Vietnam for England early on April 14 in a flight arranged by the British Government exclusively for British citizens.
How they did it?
Vietnam’s Ministry of Health on March issued a regimen for diagnosis and treatment of acute respiratory infections caused by the new coronavirus (SARS-Covid-2).
According to the regimen, the general principle of treatment for Covid-19 patients is to classify patients and determine the severity of suspected cases. Severe cases are subject for checkup, monitoring, isolation at health facilities and sample collection for diagnosis.
Those identified as patient should be completely isolated. Those showing minor sufferings such as upper respiratory tract infection and mild pneumonia are treated at regular inpatient treatment rooms.
More severe cases with severe pneumonia and sepsis would be treated in the emergency room of intensive care units.
Critical cases with severe respiratory failure, ARDS, septic shock, multi-organ failure would be referred to intensive care.
Due to the absence of specific treatment drugs for Covid-19 disease, supportive and symptomatic treatment is essential. Doctors would provide personalized treatment measures for each patient, especially serious cases. Some research therapies approved by the health ministry may be applied.
Doctors must also follow up to detect and promptly handle serious conditions and complications of the disease.
The total amount of people who have been infected with the coronavirus remains at 265 cases, including 160 returned from abroad, making up 60.4 per cent of total, and 105 infected in the community, accounting for 39.6 per cent.
The total number of people who came or returned to Vietnam from pandemic-affected countries and have been quarantined is 75,291. Of these, 713 are quarantined in hospitals, 15,564 are in quarantine centres and 59,014 at their homes.
— VNS
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