Nearly 10,000 overseas Vietnamese returning home from abroad to shun pandemic

The HCMC’s health authority has been told to be prepared to receive and quarantine an estimated 10,000 Vietnamese returnees from abroad amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Of these, 300 Vietnamese students in the United States are expected to arrive in the city through Tan Son Nhat International Airport on April 27, municipal chairman Nguyen Thanh Phong said at a meeting on Covid-19 infection prevention and control on April 24.

He asked the HCMC Health Department to take steps to send these returnees to isolation centers right after their arrival, reported VNExpress, a local news channel.

The city’s leader cited examples of two Vietnamese students returning from Japan recently and testing positive for the new coronavirus, noting that extreme caution should be maintained during the fight against the coronavirus.

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Speaking at the meeting, Nguyen Huu Hung, deputy director of the municipal Health Department, said that Vietnam National University HCMC’s dormitory, which was requisitioned as a centralized isolation center, must be resumed to its original state soon, as students are to return to school soon.

Accordingly, agencies have to closely cooperate to set up additional quarantine facilities to assist with the city’s efforts to combat Covid-19, Hung said.

Also read: Vietnam has gone 36 hours without any new coronavirus case

To date, the city has reported 54 Covid-19 infections, with 53 cases having recovered. The remaining active case, confirmed as the 91st patient, is a British pilot who is under treatment at the HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

Reporting by the SaigonTimes