Vietnam Wants to Use Vaccine Passport to Reopen Borders

The Vietnamese Government is close to reopening its borders to international travelers due to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations and work on the introduction of digital health passports.

According to VN Express, the Vietnamese Government wants to ease the entry to Vietnam but keep the country safe. A Vietnamese Government committee has said Vietnam’s IT infrastructure is ready to offer its best services if Vietnam adopts a policy to allow vaccinated foreigners to enter the country. The infrastructure should include the software and website system to confirm people’s information such as conditions of entry permits, types of vaccine, nationalities of the citizens, etc.

With the digital health passport, Vietnam’s airlines could expand international services to allow vaccinated Vietnamese citizens to fly home, businesspeople to fly in, and tourists to begin coming to Vietnam.

However, the uncertainties remain, and Dang Quang Tan, Head of the General Department of Preventative Medicine under the Ministry of Health, confirmed that: “The protection effect of the vaccines, meanwhile, is also very different for different people and the duration of vaccine protection is not yet clear, so it is difficult to determine the validity period for a vaccine passport.”