HCMC – The Ministry of Health confirmed 17,017 new Covid infections this evening, January 5, including 20 imported cases and 16,997 domestic transmissions in all 63 cities and provinces, soaring by over 2,000 cases against yesterday.
Hanoi continued to be the biggest hotspot with 2,505 cases, followed by Tay Ninh with 862, Haiphong with 792, Khanh Hoa with 782 and Binh Dinh with 735.
Ca Mau, Binh Phuoc, Vinh Long, Tra Vinh, Ben Tre and HCMC detected 448-687 new infections each, while other cities and provinces had fewer than 400 cases each.
The country’s domestic transmissions have amounted to over 1.811 million in the fourth Covid wave, which began in late April, and over 1.817 million cases in total, ranking 30th among 223 countries and territories.
This afternoon, the Ministry of Health confirmed 230 more Covid deaths, mostly in HCMC, Dong Nai, An Giang, Tay Ninh, Binh Duong, Vinh Long and Hanoi, taking the nation’s death toll to 33,475.
Up to now, Vietnam has found 25 people with the Omicron variant, all arriving from abroad.
Most Omicron infections in the country have no symptoms and the variant is less likely to damage lungs, said Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son.
According to Son, the number of Omicron infections in Vietnam is too small for the Health Ministry to have any specific conclusions on the new variant.
There is still little data to compare Omicron with the Delta variant, but all Omicron infections detected in Vietnam are asymptomatic, suggesting that this strain cause less damage to the lungs, the deputy health minister said.
To date, more than 1.4 million Covid patients in the country have fully recovered, while there are currently over 6,250 critically ill Covid patients.
The country has administered more than 155 million doses of Covid vaccines nationwide so far, with some 69.8 million people having got two shots.
Vietnam has become one of the six countries with the highest Covid vaccination coverage in the world, Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh said at a meeting this morning.
According to Minh, 99.6% of people aged 18 or older have received at least one shot of vaccine and 90.9% have been fully vaccinated. The ratios among children aged between 12 and 17 are 85.6% and 57%, respectively.
Data of the Ministry of Health showed that Vietnam secured a total of 195.1 million doses of Covid vaccines from March 2021 to January 2, 2022. To date, the ministry has allocated nearly 180 million doses for vaccine rollouts nationwide.
