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Aircraft set to leave for Equatorial Guinea next month to repatriate COVID-19 patients

VGP – An aircraft is set to leave for Equatorial Guinea on August 3 to repatriate 219 Vietnamese citizens from the African country, the Ministry of Health announced Saturday.

July 18, 2020 6:11 PM GMT+7

The ministry said it will dispatch two doctors and two nurses working at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases to accompany the passengers on their flight back home, of whom 120 had been confirmed infected with COVID-19.

Of these active cases, 22 have been monitored at two hospitals, 80 have been quarantined at isolation facilities and hotels while locations of 15 others have yet been verified.

Earlier at a meeting on July 10, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc ordered a flight to immediately repatriate Vietnamese workers from Equatorial Guinea as some of them had contracted the virus.

All of the 219 workers have been contracted to work at the Sendje hydropower plant project in Equatorial Guinea’s Littorial province, said Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs Le Van Thanh.

Late last month, some of them visited the host country’s medical facilities for COVID-19 tests as they had got such symptoms like cough and fever. Test results released on June 30 showed that 16 had the virus and 20 others were suspected cases.

Since April 10, Viet Nam has arranged 56 flights to repatriate 13,603 citizens from foreign countries and territories, official data showed./.

By Thuy Dung