Vietnam’s Covid-19 tally jumped to 312 Friday morning after 24 citizens repatriated from Russia were confirmed positive.
Friday morning marked 29 days straight that Vietnam has gone without any cases caused by community transmission.
Russia is the third worst infected country, after the U.S. and Spain, with more than 252,000 Covid-19 cases and 2,305 deaths. But Vietnam health authorities have confirmed there is no likelihood of community transmission from the latest patients.
The 24, one woman and 23 men, aged between 24 and 47, had returned to Vietnam on Vietnam Airlines flight VN0062 from Russia to the northern province of Quang Ninh on Wednesday under a government program to repatriate Vietnamese residents living and working abroad.
They had been quarantined on arrival at centralized facilities in the provinces of Quang Ninh, Thai Binh and Hai Duong. Twenty-three of the latest patients are now treated at the Thai Binh General Hospital and the other at Hospital No.2 in Quang Ninh Province.
The latest update has brought the number of active patients in Vietnam to 52, while 260 other patients have recovered, including eight confirmed Thursday.
Vietnam now has more than 12,000 people placed in quarantine, 353 at hospitals, more than 8,000 in centralized facilities and the rest at home. These are people coming from abroad or those who’ve had close contact with Covid-19 patients.
With many special repatriation flights planned, the country will continue its focus on those arriving from abroad. Everyone entering the country will be placed in quarantine for a minimum of 14 days, the period said to be the incubation time for the Covid-19 virus.
As of Friday, no Covid-19 death has been reported in the country. The health sector is searching for a matching donor to provide a lung transplant for the most critical Covid-19 case in the country, a 43-year-old British man whose lungs are just 10 percent functional.
The pandemic has affected 213 countries and territories, killing more than 303,000 people.