Vietnam on paper was in a risky situation when the pandemic first struck. We have a long land border with China and at any given time would have hundreds of thousands of Chinese visiting. Our medical system would have been easily stretched by a large outbreak.

The government here acted very early with publicised preventative measures and border controls on January 3. A brief strict lockdown was needed in March and there was a small second wave in August but overall containment worked. Large scale testing and proactive contact tracing prevented any uncontrolled outbreaks. The result is overall just over a thousand cases in a country of 100 million and no active community transmission now.