HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam's Ministry of Health has clarified that new regulations on health declarations for travellers entering and leaving the country that take effect on July 1 do not impose a blanket requirement on all passengers.

Võ Hải Sơn, deputy director of the ministry's Department of Disease Prevention, said Article 22 of Government Decree 165/2026/NĐ-CP stipulates that the Minister of Health will determine which groups of travellers are required to submit health declarations and when such measures should be applied, depending on the global infectious disease situation and the risk of diseases entering Việt Nam.

"The regulation should not be understood as a mandatory and permanent requirement for all people entering, exiting or transiting through Việt Nam from July 1," Sơn said.

According to the ministry, health declarations at border gates will only be implemented when deemed necessary for specific infectious diseases and in line with prevailing epidemiological conditions.

The clarification comes after reports and social media posts suggested that all foreign visitors to Việt Nam would be required to submit health declarations from July 1 and complete forms through the website tokhaiyte.vn, which in the past was used for COVID-19 epidemiological tracing.

However, the domain now appears to be used by some other party.

The ministry stressed that it is not currently using the website to process health declarations for travellers.

Instead, authorities are developing a new health declaration system that will only be activated and announced to the public when the need arises.

Under the new decree, health declarations may be submitted either electronically or in paper form, using bilingual Vietnamese–English forms issued by the Ministry of Health.

The regulations stipulate that declarations, when required, must be completed within seven days before entering, exiting or transiting through a Vietnamese border gate.

The ministry added that in the event of an outbreak of an infectious disease, it may issue additional guidance on health declarations and other health control measures at border checkpoints, depending on the evolving situation. — VNS