Vietnam to suspend incoming international flights over Covid

HANOI: The international airport of Vietnam’s capital will suspend inbound flights from abroad beginning Tuesday, the country’s aviation body announced, as it tackles a fresh wave of virus outbreaks.

A “temporary suspension of receiving international flights” will begin at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport from June 1 at midnight until June 7, the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam said in a statement on Monday.

Vietnam’s health minister stated that authorities had discovered a highly infectious “new hybrid variant” — a combination of the Indian and UK variants.

“Outbound international flights will continue from Hanoi”, the statement said, but the government did not further mention if domestic flights would be part of the delay.

Whereas the Vietnam authorities promptly took a U-turn and rolled back the statement by saying the revision still needed to be “studied further”, an alarm sounded across the country as it struggled to contain fresh outbreaks in more than half its ground.

The holdup was supposed to be lifted by June 4, but the CAAV announced Monday that it would remain until June 14.

Vietnam has already limited entries of foreign arrivals due to its Covid-19 restrictions, and every person coming in is subjected to mandatory quarantine.