France reopens to tourists, vaccinated Vietnamese exempt from quarantine

Vietnam is classified as "orange" along with the U.S., Britain and other Asian countries in a travel guidebook released by the French government, which means vaccinated visitors from them no longer need to go into quarantine.

They however need to furnish a negative PCR test no older than 72 hours or a negative antigen test no older than 48 hours.

For non-vaccinated people from these countries, only essential trips such as medical or family emergencies will be allowed with seven days of self-quarantine.

Orange countries are those with a high rate of virus circulation or new virus variants.

Earlier, the UAE, Oman, Sri Lanka and Bahrain have banned the entry of visitors from Vietnam while the U.K. and Japan have imposed stricter quarantine measures for them.

Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said earlier a hybrid variant with characteristics from the Indian and U.K. coronavirus strains and which spreads rapidly through the air has been found.

But WHO told Japanese newspaper Nikkei Wednesday that there is no new "hybrid variant" of the coronavirus in Vietnam, and has not sounded an alert.

More than 1.2 million of Vietnam's 96-million population have been vaccinated against Covid.

The country’s containment of Covid was a worldwide success story until late April when a fourth wave emerged infecting 5,666 people so far.