Vietnamese man faces five years in jail for Covid rule break
A Vietnamese man has been sentenced to five years in jail for spreading Covid after he flouted lockdown rules and infected eight people.
Le Van Tri, 28, was convicted of “spreading dangerous infectious diseases” during yesterday’s trial which alleged he had caused eight people to become infected including one who died.
“Tung travelled back to Ca Mau from Ho Chi Minh City … and breached the 21-day quarantine regulations,” according to the state-run Vietnam News Agency. “Tung infected eight people, one of whom died due to the virus after one month of treatment,” it added.
Tri was found to have lied on a health declaration form about his recent travel history and failed to comply with quarantine rules. When Tri later tested positive for Covid, he was found to have transmitted the virus to his relatives as well as staff at a medical centre.
In addition to the jail sentence Tri was slapped with a $880 (£630) fine.
Vietnam introduced stringent lockdown measures after the delta variant caused cases to spiral out of control in July.
Having previously been considered a Covid-19 success story because it had managed to keep the virus at bay, the country has recorded 536,788 new cases and 13,385 deaths most of which occurred over the past couple of months.
Vietnam’s economy is feeling the crunch of lockdown with industrial output in August down 7.4% from a year earlier, while exports dropped 5.4%.
In efforts to remedy the situation, Vietnamese courts have sentenced two other people to 18-month and two-year suspended jail terms on the same charges as Tri.
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