The condoms were boiled, reshaped with a piece of wood and packaged up for resale at a factory in Vietnam, according to police.

All three died in a hospital in Da Nang, a hot spot with more than 100 cases in the past week, more than half of them patients.

With international travel heavily restricted, progress in reviving tourism has been at best anemic and usually perilous.

The city reintroduced social distancing measures over the weekend after the government confirmed the first domestically-transmitted cases of coronavirus in more than three months.

Vietnam, widely seen as a success in dealing with the coronavirus, reimposed a social distancing order in Da Nang following the confirmation of the cases, the first known to be locally transmitted in the country in over three months.

European countries started opening up to each other's tourists in mid-June, but recent events have shown that the new freedom to travel is subject to unpredictable setbacks.

Vietnam has kept its virus total to an impressively low 416 cases, and had reported no locally transmitted infections for 100 days.

Vietnam has been a popular destination for wildlife products -- often from endangered species -- that are used in traditional medicine or in preparing exotic cuisine.

Advisers who help foreign firms relocate internationally said Vietnam's success in dealing with the pandemic had already boosted the confidence of foreign investors in the country.

While some parts of the world are just beginning to grapple with the pandemic, China and several other parts of the world are beginning to reopen.