The shopping festival Black Friday, modelled after the biggest shopping event of the year in the US, was kicked off on November 19 in Ho Chi Minh City with many shopping centres and stores offering discounts of up to 70 percent. It is expected to last until the end of this month.
Ho Chi Minh City is committed to enforcing vigilant pandemic prevention measures when it reopens the economy after months of strict lockdown measures, said a city leader.
Thai authorities are mulling over easing COVID-19 restriction measures in Bangkok capital and some provinces as daily new cases were less than 20,000 for the fifth consecutive day.
Daily new COVID-19 cases in Thailand surpassed the 20,000 benchmark as the country reported 20,200 new infections on August 4 morning, bringing the total to 672,385.
Lockdown measures in Bangkok and other high-risk zones will be extended for two more weeks to slow the spread of COVID-19 as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to surge in the country, local media reported.
The southern province of Binh Duong on August 1 recorded 2,179 new cases of COVID-19, 716 of whom were detected in the community. Thuan An city is the epicenter of the pandemic with 1,254 cases.
Lockdown measures have been imposed in a number of localities in Cambodia to curb the spread of COVID-19 while the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a loan of 400 million USD for the Philippines to purchase COVID-19 vaccines.
Lockdown and social distancing measures were lifted in 14 out of 18 areas in Hanoi, Director of the municipal Department of Health Nguyen Khac Hien reported on February 22.
The northern province of Hai Duong - Vietnam's current largest COVID-19 hotspot - had basically managed to put under control five big outbreaks by February 18, said the provincial steering committee for COVID-19 prevention and control.
A labour shortage, particularly in manpower-intensive industries such as agribusiness and food processing, is likely to intensify over the long term in Thailand as the COVID-19 pandemic makes it difficult for foreign labourers to move across borders.
The Philippines on August 19 confirmed 4,650 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of infections nationwide to 173,774 – the highest in Southeast Asia.
Thailand's cross-border trade fell by 9.18 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2020 due to lockdown measures and the slowing economies of neighbouring countries.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on August 17 decided to ease lockdown measures in and around the capital Manila as his government promised a “refreshed” approach to fighting COVID-19 that includes intensified testing.
Authorities of the central city of Da Nang applied a 14-day quarantine to all staff, patients and their caregivers at the Hai Chau district’s health clinic, starting at 12:00 of August 5.
Thailand will reopen checkpoints on the border with all neighboring countries to resume cross-border cargo transport and trading from July 1, according to the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
Thailand’s Board of Investment (BoI) recently approved five large-scale projects with a total investment value of 41.83 billion THB (1.34 billion USD) in an effort to reactivate economic drivers after the country began easing lockdown measures.
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