High guard against COVID-19 should remain to ensure public health: PM

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Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc speaks at the meeting with Government's permanent members (Photo: VNA)

Maintaining guard against COVID-19 is still needed to ensure public health, said Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at a meeting with Government’s permanent members in Hanoi on June 24.

Although the Government has agreed to allow foreign experts and investors to enter Vietnam as well as send Vietnamese employees to work abroad, it is necessary to strengthen management and monitoring to prevent the spread of the pandemic among the community, he said.

However, he stressed a consistent viewpoint that the Government has not allowed the entrance of international tourists in Vietnam.

He requested ministries and localities to stay highly vigilant to ensure public health and avoid impatience – which could wipe out the country’s significant achievements in COVID-19 prevention and control.

The Government leader asked relevant agencies to continue implementing measures for quick tracking of suspected infections, and ordered wearing face masks in crowded places.

He suggested carrying out short-term quarantine for experts and investors upon their arrival in Vietnam and increasing the frequency of flights to bring Vietnamese citizens home and carry foreign investors, experts and highly-skilled workers to Vietnam, as well as send Vietnamese people to work and study abroad if the host countries accept.

Regarding the possibility of reopening some international commercial flights, the PM instructed authorities to carefully consider the point of time as long as ensure that the pandemic would not spread from outside into Vietnam.

In complicated pandemic-hit areas, the Vietnamese aviation industry, under the direction of the Ministry of Transport, must prepare thorough preventive scenarios for commercial flights, he ordered.

He asked the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs and the State Bank of Vietnam to jointly implement the Government's aid packages for those seriously affected by COVID-19.

According to the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, Vietnam has no new local transmissions to report for over two months. As of June 24, 329 out of the 352 patients have recovered from the disease.

Since April 15, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has cooperated with relevant agencies and Vietnamese representative offices abroad and airlines to conduct 33 flights carrying nearly 8,000 Vietnamese citizens home from 42 countries and territories.