HÀ NỘI — Vaccine passports from 72 countries have been accepted by Vietnamese authorities to allow people to enter from abroad, and Việt Nam is currently in discussions with 80 countries and territories for mutual recognition for each other's COVID-19 vaccine certification.
Lê Thị Thu Hằng, spokesperson for the Vietnamese foreign ministry, disclosed the information on Thursday during the regular press briefing held virtually from Hà Nội.
The 72 countries and territories in question are those whose representatives in Việt Nam have officially presented the COVID-19 vaccination and/or recovery documentation to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and temporary recognition has been granted, under the new guidelines of safe, flexible, effective adaptation to COVID-19 pandemic released by the Government earlier this month, she noted.
People travelling from overseas with these documents showing that they have either been fully inoculated or recently recovered from COVID-19 can use the documents to enter Việt Nam and would be eligible for the seven-day quarantine at centralised facilities as per the health ministry’s policies.
The spokesperson also said that the foreign ministry is “engaging in close discussions with around 80 partners for the mutual recognition of vaccine passports.”
In practice, the vaccine certificates granted by Việt Nam have been accepted in a number of countries, allowing Vietnamese nationals or foreigners who have been vaccinated here to enter these countries, according to the spokesperson.
In addition, in line with the Prime Minister’s directive on facilitating travel and work of foreign experts and investors along with other specific groups, the foreign ministry is also working with ministries, agencies, and local authorities to address any outstanding issues and propose further easing of the approval process for entries of foreigners into Việt Nam, especially the process of granting visas to take into account vaccine certificates or recent recovery, Hằng said.
This would mean more streamlined administrative procedures and further decentralisation of the authority within our apparatus, she noted.
Earlier, the foreign ministry has announced that they would recognise vaccines approved for use by the World Health Organization (WHO), US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), European Medicine Agency (EMA), and the Vietnamese health ministry – meaning that any of these following ten shots would suffice: Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, Johnson&Johnson’s Janssen, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Sinopharm’s Vero Cell along with the UAE version Hayat-Vax, Sinovac, Covishield (Oxford/AstraZeneca formulation, made in India), Sputnik V, and Abdala. — VNS
BOX:
The list of 72 countries and territories whose COVID-19 vaccine certificates and recovery documentation Việt Nam currently accepts, according to the Consular Department: Poland, UAE, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Mongolian, Oman, Thailand, Romani, Japan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Czech, Morocco, Arab Saudi, Armenia, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Israel, France, Turkey, Azerbaijan, India, Switzerland, mainland China and Taiwan, Pakistan, Ireland, Greece, Kuwait, Colombia, Netherlands, Australia, Finland, Hungary, Belarus, Cambodia, Algeria, Indonesia, Nepal, Mexico, Bolivia, Croatia, Iceland, Portugal, Turkmenistan, Palestine, Qatar, Libya, Egypt, Timor Lest, Ukraine, the Philippines, Malaysia, Luxembourg, Argentina, Jordan, and Brunei.