The Hanoi Department of Health on February 14 confirmed the death of a Japanese man in Somerset West Point hotel in Tay Ho district and has quickly tracked people who had come into contact with him.

The foreign man was confirmed posthumously to be positive for the novel coronavirus in the third Covid-19 test.

Local authorities have quarantined 139 hotel employees and guests and sterilized the area surrounding the building which accommodated the Japanese. Photo: VGP

The municipal authorities immediately have put 139 hotel employees and guests at the hotel under quarantine.

According to Hanoi police, the Japanese man, born in 1967, entered Vietnam on January 17 and was immediately put under quarantine at a centralized isolation camp in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Binh district.

His two tests on January 17 and 31 were negative for Covid-19 and he was allowed to leave the quarantine camp for Hanoi on a flight on February 1. He self-isolated in the hotel from February 1 till he was dead.

Currently, 21 police officers who were examining the corpse and the hotel staff have been exposed to the coronavirus. Local authorities have sterilized the hotel and its premises. All 12 guests in the hotel’s ninth floor where the Japanese man was staying and hotel employees have been quarantined.

Mr. Khong Minh Tuan, deputy head of the Hanoi Center for Disease Control (CDC) said that at first health authority will ask with the man’s employer to provide footage from surveillance camera so that the health sector can track his contacts.

The cause of his death has yet to be confirmed. The Japanese Embassy in Vietnam has transferred the man's body to the morgue of the Vietnam-Germany Friendship Hospital. Tay Ho district's medical authority has been investigating his travel history. Areas in and around the hotel were disinfected.

The Hanoi’s Centre for Disease Control is looking for those who had come into contact with the Japanese man. Photo: MoH

The Hanoi CDC is looking for those who had come into contact with the Japanese man, or visited places he had been to at the same time which are:

- IBIS Hotel, Ho Chi Minh City, the night of January 31.

- Flight VN254 from HCMC to Hanoi, from 11:00 am to 1:20 pm on February 1.

- Somerset West Point serviced apartments, No.2 Tay Ho street, Quang An ward, Tay Ho district, Hanoi, February 1 to 13.

- Red Sun River Building (P903 and Tokyo Red Grill Restaurant on the second floor), No. 23 Phan Chu Trinh street, Hoan Kiem district, Hanoi, 12-1 pm on February 2.

- Hachi Ju Hachi Restaurant, No. 168 Xuan Dieu street, Quang An ward, Tay Ho district, Hanoi, 6-8 pm on February 3.

- Raffles Medical Clinic, No. 51 Xuan Dieu street, Quang An ward, Tay Ho district, in the mornings of February 4 and 8.

- Torikichi Restaurant, No. 75 Kim Ma Thuong street, Linh Lang ward, Ba Dinh district, Hanoi, 7-9 pm on February 5.

Local administrators advised people who might have met the man in above-mentioned venues to contact their near by medical facilities or call 0969-082-115 or 0949-396-115.  

At the time of writing, Vietnam has had additional 34 new cases of Covid-19 including 31 cases in northern province of Hai Duong and three cases in Hanoi, according to the Ministry of Health.

The new cases brought the total number of infections in Vietnam to 2,229, including 1,331 domestically-transmitted cases, according to the National Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control.

Vietnam has closed its borders to foreign visitors since March last year, only allowing entry to certain people like international experts and diplomats who will be quarantined upon arrival.