Hanoi, Aug. 20, (dpa/GNA) – Vietnam’s biggest city issued a stay-at-home order on Friday as the nation’s daily tallies of Covid-19 cases and deaths reached record highs.
The authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have banned people from leaving their homes with immediate effect as the city’s Covid-19 death count soared, and the national daily tally of new cases exceeded 10,000 for the first time.
As of Friday afternoon, Vietnam has recorded a total of 313,000 cases of coronavirus.
Over the last two weeks, the country has reported an average of around 350 deaths per day, bringing the overall death toll to over 7,500.
Pham Duc Hai, deputy head of Ho Chi Minh City’s coronavirus authority, said on Friday that the new order required residents to “stay where they are” to turn every home and workplace into an “anti-virus fort.”
Ho Chi Minh City, which has been under strict transmission prevention and social-distancing protocols for months, has emerged as the country’s viral epicentre, recording the vast majority of new cases and deaths since April.
Authorities in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi also extended social distancing measures across the entire city on Friday as local transmissions of the coronavirus continued to rise.
Vietnam has administered a single Covid-19 vaccine dose to nearly 16 million people out of a total 98 million population.
Just over 1.5 million people have been fully vaccinated, amounting to just 1.2 per cent of the population.
GNA