Sick During Tet in Vietnam? What's Open, What's Closed, Who to Call

Why Tet Catches Travelers Off Guard

Tet, Vietnam's Lunar New Year, is the biggest holiday on the calendar — closer in scale to Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve combined than to an ordinary long weekend. It's the one time of year almost everyone in the country travels home to family, and that includes the people who run the pharmacy on your street, the clinic near your hotel, and the food stall you'd normally count on.

Because Tet follows the lunar calendar, its date shifts from year to year on the Gregorian calendar most travelers plan around. It doesn't sit on a fixed date the way Christmas does, so it rarely makes it onto a pre-trip checklist — until a traveler wakes up feeling unwell in the days around Tet and discovers that the pharmacy they walked past yesterday is now shuttered with the metal grille down.

The scale of the closure is what surprises people most. This isn't a single closed Sunday. In the days immediately around Tet, many small businesses — including a large share of pharmacies and private clinics — close for several days running, and for some, up to a week.

When Is Tết in 2027?

What Typically Stays Open — and What Doesn't

Healthcare access during Tet isn't all-or-nothing, but it does narrow considerably. Here's the general pattern, without pinning it to specific dates or hours that change from year to year:

• Usually stays open: emergency departments at public and larger private hospitals keep running around the clock, staffed the same as any other day. A limited number of 24-hour pharmacy operations in city centers may also stay open through the holiday.
• Usually closes or reduces hours: the neighbourhood pharmacy (nhà thuốc) you'd normally rely on, the large majority of private clinics and family practices, and non-emergency outpatient departments even at hospitals whose ED stays staffed.

The honest summary: if you need something routine — a pharmacy consult, a scheduled clinic appointment, a non-urgent prescription — expect it to be harder to arrange than usual, for several days. If you need genuine emergency care, hospitals keep that door open. It's the space in between — sick enough to need a doctor, not sick enough for an ambulance — where Tet leaves the biggest gap for travelers.

Why a Home or Hotel Doctor Visit Is the Practical Answer

This is exactly the gap a home visit service is built to close. Viet Home Doctor runs 24/7, including nights, weekends and every public holiday — Tet is not an exception we make each year, it's the reason the on-call rotation exists in the first place. A doctor is dispatched to your hotel, homestay or villa the same way on the third day of Tet as on any ordinary Tuesday.

Practically, that means you're not trying to guess which of the handful of pharmacies near Da Nang's My Khe beach strip or Hoi An's Old Town might still be open, and you're not relying on a language barrier to work out an unfamiliar clinic's holiday hours. You message us, describe what's going on, and a doctor comes to you.

How Tết Actually Changes Each City

• Ho Chi Minh City. This is where Tết is felt hardest. A large share of the city's population returns to home provinces for the holiday, so traffic thins and whole neighbourhoods feel unusually quiet for a city this size. Quieter streets also mean fewer restaurants, shops and clinics staying open, so plan for a narrower set of options if something comes up on short notice.
• Da Nang and Hoi An. Tết here leans family and neighbourhood-oriented rather than emptying out. Local households host and visit relatives, and small shrines and offerings appear outside homes and shops. Plenty of businesses still close for the holiday, but daily street life continues at a smaller, quieter scale rather than disappearing.
• Phong Nha and Dong Hoi. Both settle into an already-quiet stretch of the calendar. Tết adds another layer of closures on top of a low season that was underway before the holiday started, so expect the towns to feel sleepy rather than dramatically different from the weeks around them.

What We Can Do at Your Hotel During Tet — and What Still Needs a Hospital

Being available every day of Tet doesn't mean we can substitute for a hospital in every situation. To be direct about the boundary:

• At your hotel, a doctor can: examine you and reach a working diagnosis, provide common medications from their kit, set up IV fluids for dehydration or a bad stomach bug, clean and dress a wound, and advise on a lapsed or lost prescription (see our prescription refill guide for more on that specific problem).
• What we don't do, and say so plainly: we don't take X-rays, run a full lab panel, admit patients, or perform surgery. If your situation needs imaging, a hospital admission, or specialist equipment, we refer you to a hospital — and the emergency department stays staffed through Tet specifically for that reason.

For anything genuinely serious — trauma, chest pain, a severe allergic reaction — go straight to a hospital ED or call 115. A home visit is the right tool for the large majority of Tet-week illness and minor injury, not a replacement for emergency medicine.

Practical Tet Travel Tips

A few things worth knowing if your trip lands during Tet, beyond the medical side:

• Fireworks and crowds. Public fireworks displays and, in some areas, firecrackers are part of Tet celebrations. Keep a comfortable distance from official displays, and if you're traveling with children sensitive to noise, plan accordingly — crowds around central viewing areas in Da Nang can get dense.
• Traffic swings both ways. In the days right before and after Tet, roads and buses fill up as the whole country travels home and back — expect heavier traffic and busier transport hubs. During the holiday itself, city streets can feel unusually quiet as many residents are away with family, though this varies block by block.
• Food surges and unfamiliar dishes. Tet brings a wave of festive foods — bánh chưng, candied fruits, rich family meals — plus street food stalls that reopen in bursts as the holiday winds down. If you have a sensitive stomach, pace yourself with anything unfamiliar; our traveler's diarrhea guide covers what to do if it catches up with you.

Booking Ahead if Your Trip Overlaps Tet

You don't need to book in advance to use the service during Tet — we take same-day requests exactly as we would any other week. But if you already know your dates overlap the holiday and you have something ongoing to plan for — a chronic condition, a medication supply that might run tight, a family member who's more vulnerable — send our team a message a few days ahead. It doesn't change how fast we respond once you need us, but it lets the on-call team plan around your specific situation rather than starting from zero.

Red Flags — When It's 115, Not a Hotel Visit

These situations don't wait for a doctor to travel to your hotel, holiday or not — they need the fastest possible route to emergency-level care, which in Vietnam means 115 or a hospital ED directly. For everything short of that — a fever, a stomach bug, a minor cut that needs proper dressing, a cold that's dragging on — a home visit gets a doctor to you without the search for an open pharmacy or clinic that Tet makes so much harder.

Paperwork for Your Travel Insurance

Tet doesn't change how billing works. You pay the doctor directly at the visit — by cash, card, or Vietnamese QR payment — and we provide an English medical report plus an itemized receipt on request, formatted for international claims and accepted by insurers including Allianz, AXA, Bupa and Cigna. We don't bill your insurer directly; you submit the documentation yourself, and we make sure it's in the shape claims departments expect, holiday or not.

For more on how a home visit works day-to-day, see our guide to hotel doctor visits in Da Nang, or browse our full library of health guides for Da Nang and Hoi An.