The People’s Committee of Dong Nai has requested all people going through the southern Vietnamese province have smartphones installed with applications or able to access to websites for online health declaration.

In a sudden move, authorities in Dong Nai have put in place a number of stringent COVID-19 prevention measures from Saturday, including setting up checkpoints at the entrances to the province and imposing a mandatory 21-day quarantine at concentrated facilities on all returnees from Ho Chi Minh City, along with other restrictions on passenger and cargo transportation services.

In addition, all people traveling through the province must bring along a smartphone that is installed with such applications as NCOVI and Bluezone or able to access to websites for online health declaration.

The provincial authorities did not mention in their announcement on Friday how they will handle those who fail to perform online health declaration.

Dong Nai’s safety measures, set in motion while the province has recorded only one local infection since the resurgence of domestic COVID-19 cases in Vietnam on April 27, have been criticized as severer than necessary by both citizens and the state-level pandemic prevention committee.

The Ho Chi Minh City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority has sought intervention from the municipal People’s Committee in neighboring Dong Nai’s regulation of 21-day concentrated quarantine on all people returning from the city, saying that about 6,000 Dong Nai workers working at industrial parks in the metropolis will be affected.

On Saturday morning, a member of the National Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control said that Dong Nai’s COVID-19 regulations will be inspected and reviewed.

In the current round of infections in Vietnam - the fourth and the worst so far, the country has logged 5,340 domestic COVID-19 cases since April 27, raising the total casesload since the disease first appeared in the nation on January 23, 2020 to 8,458.

Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh City and multiple southern localities have been battling the emergence of community-based COVID-19 cases since May 27.

Since then, the Christian congregation Revival Ekklesia Mission in the city’s Go Vap District has been associated with the majority of 339 COVID-19 cases in the metropolis, ten in Long An, three in Binh Duong, one in Bac Lieu, two in Tra Vinh, one in Tay Ninh, four in Dak Lak, one in Dong Thap, and one in Tien Giang.

Vietnam’s recoveries has reached 3,242 while death toll has mounted to 51.

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