A factory in the northern Vietnamese province of Hai Duong has been locked down after a COVID-19 cluster was detected on Thursday, leaving over 2,000 workers stranded inside the facility.

Vietnam Poyun Electronics Co. Ltd., located at Cong Hoa Industrial Park in Chi Linh City, Hai Duong Province, started to be sealed off from noon on Thursday.

More than 2,000 workers of the firm had gone to work on the morning of the same day.

Following the lockdown, they were unable to leave the factory and needed their friends and family members to supply food, blankets, and other essential items.

Aside from Vietnam Poyun Electronics, Kim Dien Village in Hung Dao Commune, Chi Linh City, where a COVID-19 patient resides, was also fenced off, according to the local People’s Committee.

Authorities will also collect samples from all workers at Cong Hoa Industrial Park and residents in Kim Dien Village for COVID-19 testing.

Strict social distancing measures were applied in Chi Linh City from noon on Thursday in accordance with the prime minister’s directive No. 16. The period will last for 21 days.

Under this directive, all residents are required to stay home and can only go outside to buy food, supplies, medicine, and other essential goods and services.

People are also allowed to leave their homes in emergency cases, to seek medical examinations and treatment, or to go to work at state agencies, armed forces, or diplomatic bodies.

People must wear face masks when leaving their houses and keep a two-meter distance from one another, while the gathering of more than two people outside public offices, schools, and hospitals is forbidden.

All schools, entertainment facilities, and non-essential businesses and services are suspended.

Vietnam had spent nearly two months detecting no local COVID-19 transmission before two patients were recorded in Hai Duong and Quang Ninh, another northern province, on Thursday morning.

The case in Hai Duong is 34-year-old Vietnamese woman working for Vietnam Poyun Electronics.

She had come into contact with a woman who left Vietnam for Japan on January 17. That woman had tested negative for the virus on January 14 and 15 prior to her departure from Vietnam.

The woman retested positive in Japan on Tuesday for the new variant, 70 percent more transmissible, that has raged in the UK recently.

As of Friday morning, the number of local infections in Hai Duong had risen to 77, all of whom were traced to the cluster in Chi Linh City.

Two other cases, also linked to this cluster, have been registered in northern Hai Phong City and Bac Ninh Province.

Meanwhile, 14 patients traced to a cluster in Quang Ninh Province were confirmed between Thursday and Friday morning, including 13 in Quang Ninh and one in Hanoi.

Vietnam has documented 1,651 COVID-19 cases as of Friday morning, with 1,430 recoveries and 35 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

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