The non-tourist Chinese are investors and legal workers, Nguyen Dac Tai, Vice Chairman of Khanh Hoa, said Sunday.

Local authorities have petitioned the Prime Minister for help, saying all stranded Chinese nationals desire to return home.

The Vietnamese government has ordered the suspension of all flights to China as the deadly new coronavirus (nCoV) outbreak spread rapidly, claiming 361 lives in China and one in the Philippines.

Khanh Hoa, home to the popular beach destination of Nha Trang, is one of three localities in Vietnam to have declared a coronavirus epidemic. Thanh Hoa in the central region and Vinh Phuc in the north are the other two provinces.

Last Saturday, a female hotel staff in Nha Trang was confirmed as Vietnam’s sixth case of pneumonia virus infection. She had caught the nCoV infection from two Chinese nationals currently quarantined in Saigon.

Since last Tuesday, Khanh Hoa’s tourism sector has stopped all activities to bring Chinese tourists to the province.

Nha Trang, well known for its beaches and scuba diving, is a popular Vietnamese destination among Chinese nationals. It helped draw 2.4 million visitors to Khanh Hoa last year, a major share of them Chinese arrivals.

Vietnam’s government declared the novel coronavirus an epidemic on Saturday.

Aside from mainland China and Vietnam, Hong Kong, Macao, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, Australia, the U.S., South Korea, France, Germany, Canada, the UAE, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines, the U.K., Russia, Finland, Nepal, Sweden, and Spain have confirmed infection cases by Sunday.

The Vietnamese government has deployed various measures to combat the virus, including halting all flights to coronavirus-hit areas, suspending visas for visitors from those regions, quarantining Chinese workers returning to Vietnam after the Lunar New Year holiday (Tet) and suspending spring festivals as well as temporarily closing schools.

The country beat seven other nominees Argentina, Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Oman, Portugal and South Africa to grasp the awards’ top prize for the first time.

It also won the Asia’s Best Golf Destination award for the third consecutive year, surpassing China, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand.

Vietnam has also been nominated besides two other countries, China and Thailand, for the Best Golf Destination in Asia-Pacific award, which will be announced in India on November 6.

World Golf Awards have been granted annually since 2014.

Voting for the awards lasted from February 21 to September 15 this year. Votes were cast by professionals working within the industry as well as golf tourism consumers.

According to the Vietnam Professional Golf Association, there were over 70,000 people playing the game as a leisure sport in 2018, up from 10,000 in 2009.

Vietnam has more than 30 golf courses of regional and international standards and 60 others are to be built by 2020.

Vietjet Air on October 30 commenced its latest international service between Da Nang City in central Vietnam and Japan’s Tokyo through the Haneda International Airport, marking the low-cost airline’s fifth route between the two countries.

This is the first direct service between Da Nang and Haneda, Japan’s busiest airport and one of Asia’s busiest, Vietjet said in a release. Haneda is less than 30 minutes from downtown Tokyo. The new route operates daily return services with each flight taking around five hours and 30 minutes.

Vietnam has emerged as one of the most popular travel destinations for Japanese. Japan is also one of the country’s biggest investors. More than 600,000 Japanese visited Vietnam in the first ten months of the year, up 15 percent from a year ago.

Amid the Chinese tourism boom, Vietnam Airlines opened a direct route connecting HCMC with Haikou City in China’s southern province of Hainan on October 28, with four flights per week.

Vietnam received more than 4.5 million Chinese tourists in the first 10 months, up 9.4 percent year-on-year, accounting for 31 percent of all foreign arrivals.

The national flag carrier also begun operating direct flights from HCMC to Indonesia’s Bali island, starting October 27. The route operates seven flights a week, each taking around four hours.

This December, Vietjet Air plans to operate direct air services between HCMC and New Delhi and between Hanoi and the Indian capital, becoming the first Vietnamese airline to launch direct air links to India.

The former route will open from December 6 onwards with four flights a week on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, while the latter will operate from December 7 onwards with three flights a week on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

The number of Indian tourists to Vietnam remained low compared to other Asian countries such as China and South Korea, with only 130,000 arrivals in 2018. But the growth was 30 percent year-on-year. China and South Korea are Vietnam’s top feeder markets with 4.9 million and 3.4 million visitors last year respectively.

The number of international tourists to Vietnam reached 14.5 million in the first 10 months, surging 34.3 percent year-on-year, with Asian tourists accounting for 75 percent of total foreign arrivals, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism reported.

A recent report by Mastercard said that Vietnam has the second fastest growing outbound market in the Asia Pacific region after Myanmar, with projected annual growth of 9.5 percent between 2016 and 2021. About 7.5 million Vietnamese travelers will travel outside the country in 2021, it added.