Hanoi randomly tests HCMC returnees for Covid

By Thuy An, Chi Le   July 6, 2021 | 08:59 pm PT
Hanoi randomly tests HCMC returnees for Covid
Medical workers at the Hoan Kiem District medical center in Hanoi test people coming from Da Nang for Covid-19. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy.
The Hanoi Health Department said it randomly performed Covid-19 tests on people returning from HCMC at the Noi Bai Airport starting Tuesday.

Quick antigen or RT-PCR tests are done by personnel from the Center for Disease Control and other related agencies.

On June 16, Hanoi also started performing quick antigen tests randomly on people arriving on flights from HCMC, but the task ended after five days.

Tran Thi Nhi Ha, director of the Hanoi Department of Health, said community screening for Covid is performed regularly, especially at airports, and since April 29 around 216,000 people have been tested using RT-PCR.

The capital is still preparing for various scenarios, with up to 5,000 beds available at the Me Linh field hospital should there be new outbreaks.

At a meeting Tuesday with the Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control, deputy director of the health department, Tran Van Chung, said the coronavirus situation is under control despite the high risk of fresh community transmission following the discovery of two new clusters this week.

One of them, in Dong Anh District, is associated with an industrial park where thousands work and thus poses an especially high risk of infection.

This week there were 14 new cases that broke a nine-day streak without an infection.

The capital has had 480 infections since late April when the fourth wave hit Vietnam. Of them 128 were found in locked-down hospitals.

HCMC has meanwhile become the country’s Covid epicenter with 7,655 cases in the fourth wave. Despite having adopted social distancing for more than a month, its daily tally has shown little sign of slowing down during the past week, with the number of infections increasing by 1,000 in just a few days.

 
 
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