Vietnam has NO new Coronavirus cases in past 24 hours

The Covid-19 count remains at 251 Thursday morning, marking the first time Vietnam has stayed clean for 24 hours in over a month.

Half of the patients, 126, have been discharged from hospitals.

Of the active ones, 25 have tested negative once and 17 twice, the latter possibly qualified to be discharged soon as per the Health Ministry’s regulation.

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Until now, no deaths have been reported in Vietnam due to the novel coronavirus.

The Health Ministry on Wednesday said the epidemic has entered the third stage in Vietnam, when community transmission cases have been reported.

The first stage started in late January to see the nation recorded 16 cases by mid-February, with many cases linked to Wuhan. Then it had enjoyed 22 days in a row without any new reports. The second stage began on March 6 with a wave of people found infected after they returned from abroad, particularly Europe.

The third one, as defined by the ministry, is the community transmission stage when more than a few locals have got infected and the source of transmission has yet to be identified.

For that, it would need more drastic social distancing to curb infection, track down the source and locate the stricken areas for isolation, deputy minister Nguyen Truong Son said.

“The central governments, related agencies and local authorities have taken strong measures to prevent infection spread. For the ‘social distancing’ method, if all people strictly follow the rule, we can totally slow down the epidemic and could even put it under control,” he said.

Vietnam is still in a 15-day social distancing campaign launched on April 4. During this period, people are told not to venture outside their homes except for essential reasons like buying foods and medicine or other emergencies.

The Covid-19 pandemic has killed almost 88,300 people after it hit 209 countries and territories.

Reporting by Le Nga @ VNExpress