Vietnam grants special entry for 331 Chinese workers

The decision was issued on June 12 following a proposal the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi sent to the Vietnamese Government Office on June 2.

The Deputy PM asked the Ministry of Public Security to grant entry visas for the Chinese workers who will be quarantined for 14 days upon entry.

Since March 22 Vietnam has not allowed entry for foreign nationals except those with diplomatic and official passports and business managers, experts and high-skilled workers. All arrivals are quarantined for 14 days.

Vietnam is considering resuming commercial flights with China, with Guangzhou being one of the first destinations, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had said at a June 12 meeting with Chinese firms operating in Vietnam.

He said the Vietnamese government will continue to support and create favorable conditions for foreign experts, businesses and investors, including those from China, to return to Vietnam.

The National Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control has said that around 2,700 foreign experts are expected to enter Vietnam in June and July. Some 1,800 others have been given special entry.

Last Friday, 150 Chinese experts were placed in quarantine after a special train carrying them arrived in the central province of Quang Ngai. They had been granted special entry to enter Vietnam to work for economic projects at the Dung Quat industrial park.

Meanwhile, the Chinese capital, Beijing, is facing a new Covid-19 outbreak with authorities announcing 49 new cases, bringing the number of people affected in the capital by the latest outbreak to 79 – all of them linked to the Xinfadi wholesale market, a food distribution centre in southern Beijing, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

A recent Guardian report said "Beijing authorities have locked down residential compounds and fired officials over a new Covid-19 outbreak as health officials warned the risk of the outbreak worsening was ‘very high.’"

China, where the pandemic first broke out last December, has reported a total of 83,000 infections and an official death toll of 4,634.

Tran Dac Phu, senior advisor at the Public Health Emergency Operations Center under Vietnam's Health Ministry, said the new outbreak in Beijing was a "lesson and wake-up call for Vietnam."

Vietnam has gone two months without community transmission caused by novel coronavirus. Of the 334 Covid-19 patients recorded so far in Vietnam, 323 have recovered.