Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Friday reopened its production base in Vietnam’s northern Bac Giang Province after a vaccination program eased concerns over COVID-19 infections.
The vaccination program targets workers in the province’s four major industrial parks and the Hon Hai plant has been listed as a model in COVID-19 prevention measures, Vietnam News Agency reported on Thursday.
The provincial government in the middle of this month ordered factories in the industrial parks closed after a new wave of COVID-19 infections emerged in Vietnam late last month, spreading across 30 provinces and cities, with Bac Giang one of the most seriously affected.
Photo: CNA
The shutdown in Bac Giang affected thousands of factories run by local and foreign firms, as well as more than 130,000 workers, the VnExpress news site reported.
The province has 178 foreign investors, including iPhone assembler Hon Hai, known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) outside of Taiwan, runs four factories there through a subsidiary, VnExpress reported, citing provincial authorities.
Hon Hai also runs a production base in the northern Bac Ninh Province, where a vaccination program has also been launched.
Hon Hai and its subsidiaries in Vietnam have said they would make donations to help with virus prevention in the neighborhoods close to its production bases, vowing to follow the Vietnamese authorities’ directions to adjust its virus prevention policy.
Vietnam has become one of Hon Hai’s most important production bases outside of China. According to Apple Inc’s latest supplier list, Hon Hai’s Bac Giang complex is among the US company’s suppliers.
Hon Hai’s subsidiaries have also set up footholds in Vietnam.
Among them, Foxconn Interconnect Technology Ltd (鴻騰精密), a connector maker, and integrated circuit packaging and testing firm ShunSin Technology Holdings Ltd (訊芯科技) have also established production lines in Bac Giang.
Vietnam had initially succeeded in containing the virus. Early this month, it had recorded just more than 3,100 confirmed cases and 35 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
However, over the past few weeks, Vietnam has confirmed more than 3,500 new cases and 12 deaths, increasing the death toll to 47.
Most of the new transmissions were found in Bac Ninh and Bac Giang, two provinces with dense industrial zones where hundreds of thousands of people work for major companies including Hon Hai, Samsung Electronics Co, Canon Inc and Luxshare Precision Industry Co (立訊精密), a Chinese supplier to Apple.
Despite strict health regulations, a company in Bac Giang discovered that one-fifth of its 4,800 workers had tested positive for the virus.
Separately, Hon Hai founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) said in a statement on Saturday that his charity Yonglin Foundation plans to apply for 5 million doses of the BioNTech SE COVID-19 vaccine made and packaged in Germany to be imported into Taiwan.
The shots would be airlifted from Germany to Taiwan without going through any intermediaries, he added.
Additional reporting by AP and Reuters
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