Hanoi police consider entire city quarantine

Police in Hanoi will consider putting the entire city in quarantine if the coronavirus situation continues to worsen, DTI News has reported.

Colonel Tran Ngoc Duong, deputy director of Hanoi Department of Police, made the announcement after a meeting of Hanoi’s Covid-19 prevention and control steering board on Wednesday.

Five Covid-19 patients are currently undergoing treatment at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases unit in the city’s Dong Anh District.

A further 760 people believed to have been at high risk from contracting the virus from the Hanoi patients have been quarantined.

Chairman of Hanoi People’s Committee Nguyen Duc Chung attended the meeting and said that so far up to 15 of the total coronavirus cases in Vietnam came from passengers on the March 2 VN54 flight from London to Hanoi.

Chung said that all people that had come into contact with the Hanoi patients would be tested for the virus with Hanoi paying the costs.

He also requested that all those working for the municipality cancel any work overseas and to scrap or scale down any conferences.

Colonel Tran Ngoc Duong said the city’s police had mulled plans to isolate much wider areas and even the whole city should the epidemic start becoming more threatening.