Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport will conduct COVID-19 rapid tests on all international arrivals at the airdome starting Saturday, according to the southern city's Center for Disease Control.

Passengers who have been fully vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 will be allowed to self-monitor their health at their places for three days and take a real-time PCR test on the third day since their arrival, if the results of their rapid test at Tan Son Nhat are negative.

The self-monitoring time for those who have not been fully inoculated is seven days and two real-time PCR tests are required on the third and seventh days since their arrival.

Health workers are expected to collect COVID-19 testing samples on 200 international arrivals on Saturday.

The authorities also applied other pandemic prevention activities at Tan Son Nhat on Friday afternoon as part of their first moves taken since the record of Omicron infections in Vietnam.

The Southeast Asian country has found 15 imported cases carrying the Omicron variant, including one in Hanoi and 14 in central Quang Nam Province, as of Friday night.

The Omicron mutant, a.k.a. the B.1.1.529 variant, was designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a variant of concern on November 26, two days after it was first reported to WHO by South Africa.

Omicron has now been found in over 100 countries, with health experts stating it appears to be more contagious but less virulent than previous strains.

As of Friday, Vietnam had documented 1,731,257 COVID-19 cases, with 1,355,286 recoveries and 32,394 fatalities, the Health Ministry reported. 

Health workers have administered more than 152.2 million vaccine doses since vaccination was rolled out nationwide on March 8.

By Friday afternoon, 68.4 million of the country’s adult 98 million people had received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine, while 77.5 million had been given at least one dose.

The ministry called on all localities to make more efforts to complete the coverage of second vaccine doses for children aged 12 to 17 in January 2022.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!