Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have decided to halt all lottery services, including via agencies and street vendors, and food and drink takeouts for 15 days from Friday.

The rules are among social distancing measures under the prime minister’s Directive No. 16 for COVID-19 prevention and control that will come into force in the city starting the same day.

Under the directive, households are requested to keep a distance from households, residential areas from residential areas, neighborhoods from neighborhoods, communes from communes, wards from wards, and districts from districts.

Non-essential businesses and services will remain suspended.

Wholesale markets and wet marketplaces are requested to ensure pandemic prevention measures, or else, they will be closed.

Facilities allowed to stay open include construction works, such essential businesses as food, medicine, fuel and power providers, banks, treasury, business establishments providing services directly related to banking and business supporting activities like notaries, law, registry, secure payments, securities, postal services, telecommunications, supportive services for transportation, imports and exports, medical examination and treatment, and funeral services.

People must wear face masks and use hand sanitizer when going outside.

Citizens are required to maintain a minimum distance of two meters in social interaction.

Any gathering of more than two people outside public offices, schools, hospitals, and in public spaces in general is completely banned.

Anyone going outside not for food, medicine, emergency care, or other essential reasons are to be subject to strict penalties.

State agencies and units must arrange for their staff to work from home. Only really necessary cases can come to work in person.

All meetings at work, except for COVID-19 prevention and control purposes, are prohibited. A meeting, if happens, must not convene with more than ten attendees.

Only vehicles for the transport of officials on duty, workers, experts, quarantined people, raw and production materials, and a number of taxis carrying people to and from hospitals and medical centers in case of emergency are allowed on the streets.

The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has assigned the municipal Department of Transport to work with the Ministry of Transport on restricting or suspending railway and air transport to and from the city.

The municipal Department of Industry and Trade, meanwhile, has been tasked with directing enterprises to ensure goods supplies.

Twelve COVID-19 checkpoints will be re-established at the entrances to the city, along with roadblocks on major routes and in areas across 21 districts and Thu Duc City.

Citizens are advised against hoarding and panic buying.

The Department of Health is charged with preparing plans for the scenario of 20,000 COVID-19 cases in the city.

Ho Chi Minh City has been battling the worst community coronavirus outbreak since May.

It is now leading the national caseload with more than 8,500 local infections so far in the ongoing wave that started hitting Vietnam on April 27.

Hundreds of new infections have been confirmed daily in recent days, with many detected via random testing in quarantined areas and community screening.

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