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Reuters
Authorities have been conducting health checks in Da Nang neighborhoods
Vietnam closed the city of Da Nang to tourists after four new locally transmitted coronaviruses were registered, the country’s first since April.
No tourist can enter the city for 14 days and additional flights are being made to fly up to 80,000 visitors.
Vietnam has been praised as a success story of the pandemic that acted early to close borders and enforce quarantine and contact tracing.
He has registered just over 400 cases and no deaths.
But nearly 100 days after his last locally transmitted case, four new cases emerged in Da Nang, a central coastal city popular with domestic tourists.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Monday ordered Da Nang residents to re-implement social distancing and shut down all non-essential services.
He said the response had to be “decisive” but that he was not yet ordering a complete closure of the city.
Links between unclear cases
The first new case, Patient 416, was a 57-year-old man who sought medical attention on July 20 for flu symptoms.
He is now on a respirator and, according to doctors quoted in local media, is in critical condition.
Authorities say they still don’t know where he contracted the virus and that he had not recently left town.
Contact tracing identified more than 100 people who had interacted with the man, but all returned negative results.
However, over the weekend, three more cases were confirmed, including one 17-year-old from the neighboring Quang Ngai province who had traveled home by coach with people who had been to Da Nang C Hospital.
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EPA
People in Hanoi are asked to wear masks again after months without
Authorities have yet to comment on the links between the four cases.
Da Nang C Hospital closed its doors in response to the first diagnosis, and Da Nang is reinforcing prevention measures.
Non-essential companies were ordered closed and meetings of more than 30 people were prohibited. Tourism trips have been suspended for 14 days.
With largely impossible international travel, Da Nang had been promoted as a vacation destination for Vietnamese.
Authorities say as many as 80,000 domestic tourists are in the city, so additional flights are being put up to take them home. People can be asked to quarantine upon their return, according to media reports.
Hospitals across the country have also stepped up preventive measures, while the capital Hanoi has begun urging people to wear masks in public again.
National soccer games were also suspended on Sunday.
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The new cases are a significant setback for Vietnam, which prides itself on its success in containing the virus.
It closed its borders to almost all travelers except citizens who returned at the start of the pandemic, and requires anyone entering the country to be quarantined at government facilities for 14 days and tested.
Most of his cases have been detected in quarantine.
An extensive contact tracing and testing operation also meant that he was able to quickly quell local outbreaks. So far it has registered only 420 cases and no patient has died.
Her most famous patient, a British man who spent 68 days on a ventilator, was able to travel home earlier this month.
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