A newly confirmed case in the northern province of Vinh Phuc has raised the number of Vietnam’s novel coronavirus infections to nine as of Tuesday, according to the Ministry of Health.

T.C.P., who is living in Vinh Phuc Province’s Tam Dao District, was among an eight-people group that recently returned to the Southeast Asian country after having attended a vocational training program in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the viral outbreak.

Four of the eight had been confirmed with the novel coronavirus infection.

P., 30, is the fifth of the group and the ninth cases in Vietnam that have tested positive for the virus.

Since P.’s arrival at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi on January 17, his public interactions have included boarding his company’s bus to its headquarters, joining a meeting, and commuting from there to home, like other members in the group.

After the first three members in the group tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Friday, the other five, including P., were quarantined and sampled by health ministry experts.

By that time, P. and another woman in the group had already showed symptoms of infection.

The health ministry confirmed on Monday morning that the test sample of the woman, 29-year-old V.H.L., returned positive for the killer virus.

The same result was announced for P. on Tuesday morning.

P. is being treated at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi alongside three others of the five infected group members, while one woman has been cured after ten days of treatment at the Thanh Hoa Province General Hospital.

The woman, the second patient after a Chinese man to have fully recovered from pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus in Vietnam, was discharged from the hospital on Monday afternoon.

According to the health ministry, all five patients were not critically ill thanks to their young age and healthy conditions.

The ministry said that one more person in the group is expected to be discharged from the hospital this week.

The novel coronavirus, which first surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, has caused 427 deaths and infected more than 20,500 people in 24 countries and territories globally as of 9:30 am on Tuesday.

Vietnam has confirmed nine cases so far, including six Vietnamese, one Vietnamese American, and two Chinese.

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