The HCM City Department of Health’s safety criteria for COVID-19 prevention and control helps enterprises maintain operations if COVID cases occur on site. — VNA/VNS Photo by Xuan Anh

The HCM City Department of Health has issued safety criteria for COVID-19 prevention and control at production facilities, businesses and industrial zones.

Enterprises must quarantine COVID-19 patients on-site and report the cases to health authorities. They must suspend operations at COVID-19 patients’ working sites for disinfection, and test people who have close contact with them.

If COVID-19 patients experience rapid or difficult breathing, or an oxygen saturation level under 96 per cent, they will be transported to the hospital.

Patients who have no or mild symptoms will be quarantined at home.

Those who do not meet the criteria for home quarantine will be allowed to stay at a designated quarantine facility in their local area or at their company, or pay a fee to spend their quarantine period at an approved hotel.

If the production facility has more than 80 per cent of fully vaccinated employees, all people who have close contact with COVID-19 patients will keep working. They will be tested on the third and seventh day, and every seven days until the company has no COVID-19 patients.

If the company has less than 80 per cent of fully vaccinated employees, people who have had one vaccine shot must quarantine for 14 days at home or stay in a quarantine zone, but fully vaccinated people can keep working.

The department has asked production facilities to have adequately ventilated areas in the workplace.

Employees have to be vaccinated with at least one dose or have fully recovered after contracting COVID-19 within the last six months. They must strictly comply with the Ministry of Health’s 5K protocol, and keep a distance of at least one metre at the working site. — VNS