HCMC – The Ba Muoi Thang Tu Hospital in HCMC today, January 19, reported three locally-infected Omicron cases, which are the first Omicron cases in the community in Vietnam.
The patients aged 35, 31 and 48 are residents of Binh Chanh, 11 and Go Vap districts, respectively, the local media reported.
They were reported to have close contact with an imported Covid-19 case, who lives in Binh Thanh District and has got three Covid vaccine doses. Her genetic sequencing result has yet to be worked out.
She flew from the United States to Vietnam on January 5 and was sent to a centralized quarantine center in Khanh Hoa Province’s Nha Trang City. At the time, she tested negative for Covid-19.
On January 10, she flew from Nha Trang to HCMC and ate out with the three above-mentioned people.
Three days later, the woman returning from the United States developed the symptoms of cough and sore throat and the three showed the symptoms of sore throat and running nose a day later, so they had their health check at a private clinic and were found to be infected with Covid-19 through the rapid testing method.
On January 15, the clinic sent their samples to the Ba Muoi Thang Tu Hospital for PCR testing.
The hospital later found some genetic abnormalities in the samples and sent them to the HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases for genetic sequencing and the results worked out on January 18 showed that they were infected with the Omicron variant.
At present, the health conditions of the four patients are stable.
On January 18, the Ba Muoi Thang Tu Hospital worked with experts of the HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the municipal Center for Disease Control on these cases and report the genetic sequencing results to the municipal Department of Health.
The competent agencies have zoned off the patients’ neighborhoods and taken samples of people having close contact with them.
Besides these three community-infected Omicron cases, Vietnam has recorded 70 imported Omicron cases, including 30 in HCMC, 27 in Quang Nam, three in Danang, two each in Thanh Hoa, Khanh Hoa and Quang Ninh, and one each in Hanoi, Hai Duong, Haiphong and Long An.
