Coronavirus: Vietnam backtracks on Hong Kong flight ban, restricts travellers from mainland China
- Vietnam declares public health emergency and halts all flights to and from mainland China
- Government will also stop issuing visas for foreign visitors who had been in China in past two weeks
Vietnam has suspended all flights from mainland China as part of “strengthening measures” against the coronavirus outbreak, its civil aviation authority said Saturday.
The body earlier took sweeping measures to also bar flights from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau in a bid to slow the spread of the virus, but later backtracked.
“We have suspended flights from Vietnam to mainland China only,” Trinh Quoc Tuan, chief of staff at the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV), said.
Hong Kong’s civil aviation authority confirmed in a statement late Saturday that the brief flight ban on the territory had been reversed as did Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry.
Taiwan is a major investor in Vietnam, investing some US$32 billion in the past three decades.
The suspensions apply to flights to and from mainland China to “prevent and control” new infections, the CAAV said.