At the conference
In the first stage, the city will allow travel businesses to welcome vaccinated foreign travelers to visit designated places and tourism facilities from January to March 31. The city expects to expand markets of tourists in the second phases from April based on the country’s current situation of pandemic.
As of now, 13 designated hotels rated from three stars to five stars have met the criteria set for safety assessment in Covid-19 prevention and control for receiving international visitors. Besides, 56 others along with 10 travel firms and seven tourist attractions have signed up to welcome back holiday makers, he added.
Regarding petrol price, Deputy Director of the HCMC Department of Industry and Trade Nguyen Nguyen Phuong said that there is no shortage of fuel in the HCMC, and people should continue to buy fuel as normal. From February 12 to present, the city recorded five among 548 petrol stations that have temporarily closed due to the shortage of petroleum products of their distributor, Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical Limited Liability Company.
According to Chief of Office of HCMC Department of Health Nguyen Thi Huynh Mai, HCMC recognized 166 Omicron cases, including 11 community cases and 155 imported from January1 to present. The city’s health sector has asked the competent departments, units and local authorities of districts, wards and communes to strengthen supervision and management of people entering the city from abroad to prevent cases of importing the new variant of Omicron; tracing and identifying the contacts of all suspected people.
Speaking at the meeting, Deputy Director of the HCMC Department of Information and Communications Tu Luong noted that as of 6pm on February 16, the number of Covid-19 cases detected rose by 518,052, including 517,138 community cases and 914 imported.
Currently, around 844 patients are being treated in medical facilities citywide, including 45 children under the age of 16, 62 severe patients and 10 those who received ECMO support.
By February 16, the city had injected 8,109,528 doses of vaccines to date, 7,309,744 fully inoculated, 665,784 booster shots and 3,968,662 third shots.
The number of children who were found to be infected with Covid-19 has slightly increased after students in all grades of educational facilities return to schools for in-person learning, said Head of the Division of Educational and Political Mission under the Department of Training and Education Trinh Duy Trong.
According to statistics of schools, the percentage of children of kindergartens going back in-person learning is 66.33 percent, pupils of primary schools is 95.99 percent while students of secondary and high schools are 96.89 and 98.93 percent respectively.
