The Ministry of Industry and Trade’s task force and state-run organisation Viettel Post Joint Stock Corporation (Viettel Post) have launched a shopping service on Viettel Post’s Voso.vn e-commerce platform to help people access food without leaving their homes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The task force will support Viettel Post by linking goods sources and forming connections with the Departments of Industry and Trade of provinces and cities to implement the service. Voso has so far debuted 63 websites for the service in 63 cities and provinces nationwide, with the service became operational in 61 of them.
According to a press release, in HCM City and Da Nang, where social distancing measures are strict, Viettel Post and Voso have their resources ready to begin the service when granted permission by the local authorities. Earlier, Voso’s shopping service was piloted in 11 localities, delivering more than 100,000 orders – over 500 tonnes of products. Viettel Post and Voso are committed to delivering between 500-600 tonnes of goods a day in provinces and cities nationwide while ensuring the Ministry of Health’s pandemic prevention and control measures.
Facing the dangerous and highly contagious Delta variant in the fourth wave of COVID-19, government agencies are utilising technology for large-scale service distribution, contact tracing, testing, and vaccination management. Technology now forms part of the current principle for COVID-19 prevention and control. It is expected to help the healthcare sector fight the pandemic more effectively and serve as a means for citizens to coordinate with authorities in COVID-19 prevention and control.
Nguyen Truong Nam, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Health’s Information Technology Department, said that in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the digital transformation era, IT has been increasingly applied to healthcare to better serve medical examination and treatment. He noted that many technological solutions are being used concurrently to help with the COVID-19 combat such as telehealth systems, Bluezone, and NCOVI apps. Also, the COVID-19 vaccination management platform, which includes an e-health record application, a COVID-19 vaccination information portal, a national vaccination support system, and a medical command centre. Recently, the National Technology Centre for COVID-19 Prevention and Control launched the Help Me! Project to connect IT engineers and over 150 volunteers in Vietnam and around the world to support Vietnamese people affected by the pandemic.
Talking about the platform for COVID-19 vaccination management, the Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung noted that this is the first time Vietnam has deployed such a national platform for fast and mass vaccination, along with safety, effectiveness, and transparency to support management, supervision, and research activities.
Do Cong Anh, the Deputy Director of the Authority of Information Technology Application at the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC), explained that in the COVID-19 vaccination management platform, every user receives a QR code and an e-health record. This QR code will not only assist the pandemic combat but also help carry out services related to a digital government, economy, and society in the future. Proactive, timely, and appropriate IT applications will be useful for the battle against epidemics, especially when COVID-19 is spreading fast. Given this, the Ministry of Health has issued guidance for localities on IT application and coordinated with the MIC to deploy sets of IT application solutions to meet anti-pandemic requirements in the new context, an official remarked.
