Hundreds of thousands of medical masks will be offered to the public for free from August 25 to September 30 in an effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic across Vietnam.

The activity is a joint effort between the Voice of Vietnam (VOV)’s Vietnam Digital Television VTC and the Vietnam Ancestral Global Day project organising board.

On August 25 in Hanoi, a “Mask ATM” was put into operation at 23, Lac Trung street, offering 45,000 medical masks with 3-4 layers.

The machine will run from 5am-5pm every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

It features a facial recognition system, meaning that when residents arrive to pick up their face masks, it will recognise their face.

Once the device has detected their face, residents can then press buttons in order to receive their free face masks.

The automatic device within the machine will deliver the masks through a slot upon receiving the relevant signal. 

Ahead of receiving the masks, citizens are required to line up and maintain a minimum of distance of two metres apart from each other.

Each citizen could receive a maximum of two bags of masks, with each holding three ones.

Tens of thousands of medical masks were also handed over to reporters covering the fight against the pandemic.

A representative of the organising board said VOV will continue working with agencies and mass organisations to hold meaningful activities to combat the pandemic between now and the year-end.

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