SOUTH KOREA
Arrivals to be quarantined
Every person arriving from overseas would be required to undergo two weeks of quarantine to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said yesterday. The country confirmed 105 new cases as of Saturday, bringing the total to 9,583, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday. Of the new cases, 41 were travelers arriving from overseas, including 40 South Korean citizens and one foreigner, the agency said. The new mandatory isolation for all arrivals would go into effect on Wednesday, Chung said at a government meeting. The policy would also apply to South Korean citizens.
SINGAPORE
Man’s passport canceled
The city-state canceled the passport of one of its citizens who was found to have breached a requirement to quarantine himself after returning from overseas. The man arrived by ferry from Batam, Indonesia, on March 19, and left again for Indonesia the same day, despite being issued a notice to stay home for 14 days, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said in an e-mail. He returned on Tuesday last week and was issued a second notice.
CAMBODIA
Entry rules tightened
The country yesterday reported one new case of COVID-19, bringing the total to 103 as it prepares to tighten entry requirements for foreign nationals to try to curb the spread of the virus. The new case is a 30-year-old woman who worked in a karaoke club in the northwestern Banteay Meanchey Province, the Ministry of Health said in a statement. A total of 21 patients have recovered since January, it said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said that it would cancel visas on arrival for foreign nationals for one month, effective midnight today, to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
VIETNAM
Hospital locked down
Officials ordered one of the nation’s largest medical centers to be locked down and demanded that thousands of employees and people who recently visited Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital be tested for COVID-19 after nurses and food workers contracted the disease. The country, which has 179 confirmed cases and no reported deaths from the virus, has tied most recent infections to people arriving from Europe and other countries. The government, which is isolating foreigners and Vietnamese citizens entering the country from abroad, has quarantined or placed under monitoring 75,085 people. It has also suspended most international flights, restricted domestic travel and closed the majority of businesses across the country.
THAILAND
Virus cases reach 143
The country has 143 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 1,388, the spokesman of the government’s Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration said yesterday. The country also recorded one new fatality, bringing the total deaths to seven. The latest victim was a 68-year-old man from Nonthaburi Province who had attended a crowded boxing match in Bangkok, where there had been a cluster of infections, the spokesman said. Authorities have imposed a lockdown in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, while authorities on the resort island of Phuket have asked people to stay home between 8pm to 3am in a new restriction on movement to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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