Police check papers of people in Da Nang City, September 5, 2021.
Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong 

Central Da Nang City has announced less restrictive social distancing requirements to have more people go out and directly buy goods. 

Specifically, starting Thursday, people in "yellow zones," at high or medium Covid risk, will be allowed to go grocery shopping by themselves instead of doing so via authorized individuals in their residential areas.

As decided by the city administration Tuesday, each household would be provided a QR code pass for one person to go shopping for food and essential goods once every five days.

In yellow zones, construction material suppliers; technical services, power, water system maintenance; stationary suppliers, computer services, livestock feed, agricultural suppliers can resume operation yet with less than half of employees to ensure social distancing.

Residents are also allowed to visit these stores if they are in the same neighborhood and in case there is a need to exit the neighborhood, they must obtain a travel pass from ward authorities.

Suppliers of gas, electricity, water, and petrol can reopen with half the staff. Automobile and motorbike service facilities can resume operation with full staff numbers while banks, seaports, airports, train stations, road management stations can have 70 percent of staff at work.

For publishers, post offices, telecommunication services, all staff can go to work.

Factories and manufacturing and production facilities in industrial zones with less than 100 workers can have all employees at work yet those having more can only operate with 70 percent of staff.

For "green zones," or areas at low risk, people can directly go shopping at either supermarkets or traditional markets. Each household will be provided a QR code per person to go grocery shopping thrice per week.

People in these areas can also go walking and do other exercises in public places from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. aside from only 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. as regulated previously, but must keep a minimum distance of two meters from each other.

"Red zones", at very high risk, will be locked down for at least 14 days and people living inside tested regularly.

Locals can use two sites to check the status of each area, covidmaps.danang.gov.vn and bit.ly/vungdovangxanh.

The new rules will be applied from Sept. 16 until further notice. In the past three days, Da Nang with a population of 1.1 million had recorded 13, 12 and 11 cases per day.

For now, 28 out of 56 communes and wards of seven districts are designated green zones after going 14 days in a row without detecting any community cases.

Da Nang had ordered everyone to stay at home from Aug. 16.

Before that, it had imposed Directive 16, which contains the country’s most stringent social distancing rules and prohibits people from leaving home except for buying food or medicines and working.

In the ongoing wave that broke out four months ago, the city has recorded more than 4,800 community cases.