Citizens from Equatorial Guinea, who were repatriated on July 29, finish quarantine on Thursday morning. — Photo suckhoedoisong.vn

HÀ NỘI — 183 Vietnamese citizens, repatriated from Equatorial Guinea on July 29, were officially allowed to return to their families on Friday morning after quarantine and testing negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

They were quarantined at the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases No 2 in Kim Chung Commune, Đông Anh District in Hà Nội.

This morning, after half a month of quarantine, the hospital completed procedures and handed the discharge certificates to 183 people. They all have tested negative at least three times.

Vũ Minh Điền, head of the Quality Control Department at the hospital, said initial information showed that the delegation of 219 citizens working in Equatorial Guinea had 120 positive cases for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But when the hospital re-tested using RT-PCR method, only 22 cases turned up positive.

"Local centres for disease control will give the citizens further instructions on self-quarantine. The SARS-CoV-2 virus still has many things we cannot decipher, therefore, we recommend citizens must wear masks, limit exposure and if they have symptoms, they must immediately notify local health forces,” said Điền.

As one of those who finished medical quarantine today, N.P.T. could not hide his joy and said: "At that time Equatorial Guinea had 3,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 50 deaths, we really felt trapped. We never thought that we could have this day. Thank you all." — VNS