BY PROF. ENRIQUE SORIANO
“Hanoi learned from SARS that it had to react quickly to any disease outbreaks and take tough initial measures. It was the first country to successfully contain SARS. So, with COVID-19, the Vietnamese authorities reacted immediately, decisively, and with a degree of severity that proved to be a good judgment.”
SO HOW did Vietnam outsmart COVID-19?
Let us first understand the definition of crisis.
Cambridge English Dictionary defines a crisis as a situation that is extremely difficult or dangerous especially when there are many problems like a major global crisis combined with an economic crisis.
On the other hand, crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a disruptive and unexpected event that threatens to harm the organization or its stakeholders.
Three elements are common to a crisis:
(a) a threat to the organization
(b) the element of surprise
(c) a short decision time
This type of crisis is a process of transformation where the old system can no longer be maintained. Therefore, the fourth defining quality is the need for change.
Crisis management involves dealing with threats before, during, and after they have occurred. It is a discipline within the broader context of management consisting of skills and techniques required to identify, assess, understand, and cope with a serious situation, especially from the moment it first occurs to the point that recovery procedures start.
This pandemic has clearly tested our political leaders and the COVID-19 crisis has revealed many truths about leadership and governance of those in power. It is becoming apparent that experience is correlated to successful leadership and successful leadership is directly related to how any crisis is managed.
Comparing our inaction with that of Vietnam’s quick response to the crisis is worth studying.
Outsmarting Covid-19
“When you’re dealing with these kinds of unknown, novel, potentially dangerous pathogens, it’s better to overreact,” says Dr. Todd Pollack of Harvard’s Partnership for Health Advancement in Vietnam in Hanoi.
Recognizing that its health system would soon become overwhelmed by even a mild spread of the virus, Vietnam instead chose prevention early instead of fighting the virus. The government clearly had a plan and it showed the world that it would be decisive and on a massive scale.
According to a BBC news report, by early January, before it had any confirmed cases, “Vietnam’s government was initiating ‘drastic action’ to prepare for this mysterious new pneumonia which had at that point killed two people in Wuhan. When the first virus case was confirmed on Jan. 23 – a man who had travelled from Wuhan to visit his son in Ho Chi Minh City – Vietnam’s emergency plan was in action.
“It very, very quickly acted in ways which seemed to be quite extreme at the time but were subsequently shown to be rather sensible,” says Prof Guy Thwaites, director of Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City.
Vietnam enacted measures other countries would take months to move on, bringing in travel restrictions, closely monitoring and eventually closing the border with China and increasing health checks at borders and other vulnerable places.
Schools were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday at the end of January and remained closed until mid-May.
A vast and labor intensive contact tracing operation got under way.
Preventing the spread of the virus
Asia Unbound’s Huong Le Thu explained in detail, “Vietnam’s response is especially impressive, given that it is a lower middle-income country, poorer than neighbors like Indonesia and the Philippines. Those countries face expanding outbreaks and do not seem to have gotten control on domestic transmission.
Vietnam has a modest budget for health care and broader public health measures and cannot test as many people. It also shares a border with China, where the pandemic originated, and its economy is closely linked with that of China. It was also one of the first countries to have a confirmed COVID-19 case outside of China.
Huong continued, “Chastened by its experience with SARS, which hit China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia hard in 2003, Hanoi learned from SARS that it had to react quickly to any disease outbreaks and take tough initial measures. It was the first country to successfully contain SARS.
So, with COVID-19, the Vietnamese authorities reacted immediately, decisively, and with a degree of severity that proved to be a good judgment.
Crisis does not just make or break a leader, it also cripples an economy./PN
