HCMC – With 4,806 new Covid-19 cases reported today, October 8, Vietnam’s single-day Covid-19 caseload has stayed below 5,000 for four consecutive days.
Specifically, the Ministry of Health reported 11 imported cases and 4,795 local infections in 42 provinces and cities, up 648 cases against yesterday.
HCMC recorded nearly half of the new local infections, at 2,215 cases, followed by Binh Duong with 828 cases, Dong Nai with 612 cases and An Giang with 182 cases. Other cities and provinces reported less than 100 cases each.
The new cases have raised the country’s tally in the current fourth Covid-19 wave to 827,033 cases, including 754,303 patients who have recovered from Covid-19.
Today, 994 Covid-19 patients were released from hospitals.
Meanwhile, 114 Covid-19 deaths were confirmed, including 78 cases in HCMC, 17 in Binh Duong, seven in An Giang, three each in Dong Nai and Long An, and one each in Dong Thap, Ninh Thuan, Kien giang, Bac Lieu, Tay Ninh and Can Tho.
In related news, HCMC has administered more than 12 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to local residents. Nearly 70% of residents aged 18 and above in the city have got two vaccine doses, according to the municipal Center for Disease Control.
Districts with a low proportion of fully vaccinated people include Binh Chanh (61%), Binh Thanh (62%), Binh Tan (66%), and District 4 (69%) and District 6 (69%).
Explaining the slow vaccination progress over the past few days, head of the HCMC Department of Health’s office Nguyen Thi Huynh Mai said nearly 98% of residents aged 18 and above in the city had received one vaccine shot and nearly 70% of them had got two shots, so the number of unvaccinated people was small.
At a press briefing on October 7, Pham Duc Hai, deputy head of the municipal anti-Covid steering committee, said 20 districts in the city had brought the pandemic under control. Only Binh Tan and Binh Chanh have yet to meet pandemic prevention and control criteria.
As of October 4, Thu Duc City and 16 districts have met the criteria. Over the past three days, districts 4, Binh Thanh and Hoc Mon have basically kept the pandemic in check.
A week after the city adopted Directive 18 on gradual economic reopening, most of local residents have adapted safely and flexibly to the new normal. The number of enterprises resuming their operation is increasing.
Specifically, more than 9,200 firms in the city have resumed operation, including 972 out of 1,412 enterprises in industrial parks and export processing zones and 88 out of 118 businesses in the Saigon Hi-Tech Park.
However, the number of laborers getting back to work remains low as large numbers of migrant workers have left the city for their hometowns in other parts of the country.
Since October 1, over 157,000 people have returned to their hometowns from southern localities and over 1,000 of them have been found to be infected with Covid-19, according to the Ministry of Health.
