BANGKOK • Thailand was racing to track down about 200 people in its northern provinces yesterday to stop a potential Covid-19 outbreak after three Thai nationals entered the country illegally from Myanmar and tested positive days later.

Yesterday, Vietnam confirmed its first locally transmitted Covid-19 case in nearly three months, after the infection of a man related to a flight attendant who had tested positive after returning from Japan two weeks ago.

Vietnam's health minister ordered provinces and state agencies to tighten screening, and contact tracing efforts were launched after the 32-year-old man was confirmed as the first reported domestic infection in 89 days.

The authorities said the man taught at language-learning centres and had been to cafes and karaoke bars since his exposure to the flight attendant. Those places had since been closed.

In Thailand, the three women bypassed immigration checks and entered via natural border crossings last Tuesday and Friday, skipping the mandatory quarantine for new arrivals, according to Chiang Rai's provincial governor Prachon Pratsakul.

There were 356 potentially exposed people in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai provinces, among them employees and customers of a hotel, shopping mall, cinema, restaurants and passengers in a van and taxi, Mr Prachon said.

So far, more than 150 people in the northern provinces have been found and have tested negative, senior health official Sopon Iamsirithaworn said.

The first of the three new cases arrived last Tuesday in Chiang Rai and travelled to Chiang Mai, where she later showed coronavirus symptoms and went to a hospital.

Two others who worked in the same entertainment venue in Myanmar returned on Friday.

They stayed at a local hotel and later sought Covid-19 tests, which were positive.

REUTERS