Officials of the Xin Cai Border Post in the northern province Ha Giang on Monday accepted 20 Vietnamese nationals who were handed over by Chinese police.

According to the local border guards, the handover procedure took place around 1:00 pm on Monday.

Major Mua Mi Cay, a political instructor at the Xin Cai Border Post, said the repatriated group consists of farmers doing seasonal jobs in Yunnan Province, China.

One of the workers in the group hails from the southern province of Kien Giang, while the rest are from Ha Giang Province.

In another case, the Xin Cai Border Post detected four Vietnamese nationals illegally crossing the border to enter the country.

The four were promptly transferred to a centralized quarantine zone in accordance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines.

As of 6:00 pm on Monday, a total of 343 cases of Vietnamese citizens attempting to illegally cross the border back into the country had been detected, with 275 entering from China, 66 from Cambodia, and two from Laos, the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control and the Border Guard High Command reported.

Security along the Vietnamese border has been tightened over the past days to prevent illegal entries and reduce risks of COVID-19 transmission from border jumpers.

On December 26, the Ministry of Health confirmed four coronavirus cases among a group of six Vietnamese people who sneaked into Vietnam two days earlier through the Vietnam-Cambodia border to avoid mandatory quarantine applied to anyone arriving from outside the country.

The Southeast Asian country has documented 1,515 COVID-19 cases, with 1,361 recoveries and 35 deaths, according to Ministry of Health statistics.

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