More foreign firms in HCMC suspended amid coronavirus crisis

Taiwanese footwear manufacturer Long Rich in Thu Duc City has let around 4,000 workers stay off work for 14 days after it detected coronavirus cases in its storage facility, which disrupted production.

Around 3,600 other workers in the company who live in Binh Duong were also unable to return to Ho Chi Minh City as they are undergoing seven-day quarantine after leaving the southern metropolis.

Taiwanese footwear manufacturer Freetrend Industrial Vietnam , which employs around 21,000, also suspended operations Friday to re-evaluate coronavirus control protocols. Three days prior, the firm detected several Covid-19 cases through a screening process, which forced all close contacts to be removed from the factory and workshops with infected cases to be closed down.

Two other firms in Thu Duc that produce fan motors, Nidec Vietnam and Nidec Sankyo, both Japanese firms under the Nidec corporation with around 10,000 workers, also had to stop operations.

Nidec Vietnam stopped operations on July 7 to re-evaluate coronavirus control measures, while Nidec Sankyo was requested to suspend operations as well on July 3 after recording hundreds of coronavirus cases.

In District 7, both Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Solen Electric with 600 workers and Taiwanese textile firm Hung Way with 1,300 workers have suspended operations this week for 15 days.

HCMC, now the nation's largest coronavirus hotspot, has around 1.6 million workers in several factories. At least 38 companies in the city have detected coronavirus cases in the fourth wave, while over 1,800 workers have been infected as of Wednesday, according to the HCMC Federation of Labor.

The southern city has recorded 11,415 cases so far in the new wave. It is undergoing a 15-day social distancing order since Friday to curb the spread of infection.