UAE, Oman ban entry of travelers from Vietnam

By Nguyen Quy June 3, 2021 | 08:04 pm PT

A security staff at Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport checks body temperature of passengers, April 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Anh Duy.

The United Arab Emirates and Oman will prohibit the entry of visitors from Vietnam from Saturday while the U.K. requires them to self-quarantine for 10 days.

Aviation authorities in the UAE said the ban would also apply to people visiting Vietnam in the last 14 days and transiting through its airports.

The UAE has so far had over 576,000 infections and 1,689 deaths.

The Sultanate of Oman, which has also added Vietnam to its travel ban list, has had over 220,000 cases and 2,385 deaths.

The U.K. government has not yet imposed an entry ban on travelers coming from Vietnam, but requires all arrivals to seclude themselves at home for 10 days and get tested twice with effect from June 8.

Several countries have been banning and imposing stricter quarantine measures for travelers from Vietnam since Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said last week a hybrid variant with characteristics from the Indian and U.K. coronavirus strains and which spreads rapidly through the air has been found.

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

Vietnam's containment of Covid was a worldwide success story until late April when a fourth coronavirus wave reemerged in the country.

It has recorded 5,008 cases of infection since it began.