HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam will limit flights that bring citizens home from now until the end of the Lunar New Year in mid-February, when large internal meetings are expected, to reduce the risk of coronavirus, the prime minister said. country minister.
With a new variant of COVID-19 spreading across the world and with the upcoming Lunar New Year, the country’s most important holiday, only necessary flights approved by the Ministry of Health, Foreign Affairs, Defense, Public Security and Transport can enter the country, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said.
After the Lunar New Year, which runs from 10 to 16 February, the transport ministry will study the possibility of resuming international flights, added Phuc.
Vietnam has suspended all incoming international commercial flights since the end of March, but the government has been operating repatriation flights to bring home Vietnamese citizens trapped abroad in the midst of the pandemic.
Some special flights carrying experts and foreign investors have been allowed to fly to Vietnam. All people entering the country need to be quarantined for 14 days.
The country on Tuesday suspended flights arriving from countries with new variants of the COVID-19, initially Britain and South Africa.
Thanks to strict quarantine and tracking measures, Vietnam fared much better than many nations, registering a total of 1,513 coronavirus infections and 35 deaths. 38 days have passed without any case being transmitted locally.
(Reporting by Phuong Nguyen; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)