Fourteen new COVID-19 cases on Thursday afternoon brought the country's total to 1,007.
After 99 days without a single detected community-spread infection, Vietnam is once again facing near-daily positive test results. Eleven of yesterday's 14 cases are in Da Nang, which is the center of this second-wave outbreak.
According to the government's official COVID-19 portal, six of the cases are family members of Da Nang patients, one is a medical worker, and one is a patient at the Da Nang Hospital. Additionally, the list also includes a man in Quang Nam whose wife and brother-in-law had tested positive in Da Nang; a Filipino specialist who had arrived in Khanh Hoa Province from South Korea; and a Saigon resident who returned from Equatorial Guinea.
Hai Duong City in northern Vietnam, which recently implemented strict social distancing rules after three residents tested positive for the coronavirus, registered no new cases on Thursday.
Hanoi has registered 11 positive cases in recent days, yet some residents have been observed acting less diligently when it comes to social distancing and mask-wearing. This week the city issued restrictions stipulating that all cafe and restaurant patrons must be at least one meter apart or establishments risk being closed, but people continue to gather, as reported in an article by VnExpress.
Scientists studying the strain of the virus in Hai Duong recently determined that it spread there from Da Nang. At the time of writing, of Vietnam's 1,007 COVID-19 cases, 542 have recovered, 439 are active cases and 25 have died. Vietnam's first COVID-19 infection was confirmed on January 23, a 66-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan, China who visited his son living in Vietnam.
