Incoming foreign visitors to Vietnam in the upcoming time will likely have to pay testing and quarantine expenses, a government official has said.

Foreign visitors to Vietnam will bear quarantine and testing fees. Photo: Zing

Upon arriving in the country, the visitors will be quarantined at lodging facilities for five days, according to a government plan.

The conditions will apply to holders of official and diplomatic passports, staff of international organizatons, experts, managers, skilled workers, investors and their relatives. 

The visitors, who are required to have health certificate for coronavirus testing three days before they board for flights to Vietnam, will be tested via real-time polymerase chain reaction (real-time PCR) for SARS-CoV-2 twice.

Visitors who enter Vietnam after transit in Japan and South Korea need to undergo 14-day mandatory quarantine.

Towards international visitors: careful but not strict

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Friday told local authorities to be careful in resuming international flights but not too strict in reopening the borders.

Mr. Phuc said that relevant agencies and the health sector need to cooperate to effectively implement precautionary measures altogether to avoid new waves of infections when Vietnam reallows foreign arrivals.

The PM made the statement at a time when Vietnam is considering the resumption of a number of international flight routes after the country has undergone nine days without locally-transmitted coronavirus infections.

Currently, the Ministries of Transport, Health, Defense, Public Security, and Foreign Affairs are working on people who are eligible to enter and airports set to receive international commercial flights.

Flights

On September 11, a representative of the Ministry of Transport said that Vietnam from September 15 will resume four air routes namely Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to Taiwan (China), China’s Guangzhou, Japan, and South Korea.

Connections to will be expanded to Cambodia and Laos by the month-end.

Accordingly, there will be four flights each on the Ho Chi Minh City – Guangzhou, Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh City – Tokyo, Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh City – Seoul, and Hanoi/HCM City – Taipei routes per week.

At present, Vietnam has reported 1,060 Covid-19 infections, of them 85.09% have recovered, and 35 fatalities.