The Da Nang government has announced an easing of the city's strict social distance rules from midnight on 4 September after the coronavirus outbreak was effectively brought under control in the city.

Da Nang Party Committee Deputy Secretary Nguyen Van Quang and municipal People's Committee Vice Chairman Le Trung Chinh presiding over the meeting on Friday afternoon

People across Da Nang are still recommended to continuing staying at home as much as possible, and only go out under absolutely necessary circumstances, taking measures to protect themselves and their families.

In addition, residents are advised to wash their hands regularly with either soap or alcohol hand rub. Da Nang will reduce its social distancing rule from 2 metres to 1 metre from 5 September. Therefore, people across Da Nang must stay at least 1 metre away from anyone they do not live with when outside their home.

Ban on public gatherings of more than 20 people remains, except for in offices, schools and hospitals.
Festivals, religious and sports tournaments and such events as wedding and housewarming parties with gathering of more than 20 people will remain banned until further notice.

In addition, places such as bars, beauty salon, discos, cinemas, gyms, karaoke and massage parlors, and discotheques, tourism and travel services, entertainment facilities, recreational activities in hotels and resorts, and casinos, plus and prize-winning electronic games for foreigners, will remain closed.

Markets, supermarkets, shopping centres and stores that sell essential items, plus serviced accommodation establishments and restaurants, are allowed to stay open but these places are required to ensure best practices to avoid the spread of coronavirus for their staff and visitors. In particular, these places are urged to ensure enough supplies of face masks and alcohol-based hand sanitizer gel for their staff and visitors.

Restaurants, eateries, food and drink serving establishments will be limited to offer takeaways and home delivery services.

Universities, junior colleges, kindergartens, primary to secondary schools, continuing education and vocational training establishments, foreign language and tutoring centres, plus related facilities, will remain closed.

Inter-provincial passenger transport coaches from/ to nationwide cities and provinces where the Prime Minister’s Directive No 16 remains in place will remain banned.

Specialised vehicles used for pandemic prevention tasks, or to transport food, necessities, production materials, workers and experts for businesses are allowed to operate as normal.

Intra-city public transport service will be limited to carry not more than half of available seats on vehicles. Anyone travelling on public transport in Da Nang must wear a face covering and use sanitizergels from 5 September under a new rule. 

All local families still use tickets which allow them to go shopping at traditional markets for odd or even days in orders to limit crowds and gatherings.

Factories, production facilities, and construction sites are allowed to remain operation but asked to take drastic actions to stem the spread of the virus.

Da Nang is implementing a dual goal of both proactively combating the coronavirus and driving the city's economic recovery. Picture taken at the Son Tra district-based Tho Quang fishing wharf

Addressing a meeting on Thursday afternoon, municipal Party Committee Deputy Secretary Nguyen Van Quang stressed the need to ease the social distancing norms in tandem with tightening the monitoring of the public's good practice of infection prevention and control measures for Covid-19. Checkpoints set up in major gateways to the city must still operate.

Heed should be paid to scaling up the city’s testing programmes in a bid to detect any virus carriers in the community, especially those who appear to show no clinical symptoms, thereby achieving the elimination of the virus in the city. In the coming days, medical workers will continue collecting swab samples from the remaining local families whose members have yet to be tested for Covid-19.

By XUAN DUNG- Translated by A.T