At the Pouyuen Vietnam factory in HCMC, where a person was recently diagnosed with Covid-19, thousands of workers leave together after work every day, raising contagion concerns. 

Hundreds of buses wait at the parking lot of the Taiwanese factory in Tan Binh District to ferry workers home after work.

Established in 1996, the company is the biggest employer in HCMC with 56,000 workers. Its main products are sneakers.

At 4 p.m. on June 4 workers leave with masks on but unable to maintain the two-meter distance mandated by health authorities because of the sheer numbers. 

Many of them leave on motorbikes or bicycles.

National Route 1A and others roads around the factory are packed when workers leave.

Thuy, a worker, waits for a relative to pick her up. “The outbreak in recent days concerns me, but I’m more worried about whether the company will close down since my family will face difficulties then.”

The buses transport workers to as far away as Long An and Tien Giang provinces. The workers say the vehicles are disinfected regularly and the number of passengers has reduced since before the pandemic.

Some workers who live close by walk home.

Many stop at a nearby market to buy food.

On Wednesday, after a worker was diagnosed with Covid, over 1,100 people have been told not to come for work temporarily. 

The patient is a worker in the factory’s section C who possibly contracted the infection from her husband.

HCMC has recorded 542 cases in the latest wave, including five in industrial parks, to rank third in the country behind the two northern provinces of Bac Giang and Bac Ninh. 

It has 17 industrial parks and manufacturing zones with over 320,000 workers in all.