Read what is in the news today:

Politics

-- South Korea will provide free health care for Vietnamese citizens, who are affected by the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the nation in accordance with the World Health Organization’s standards, South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh on Friday afternoon during a phone talk at the request of the South Korean side.

-- Vietnam’s steering committee for COVID-19 prevention agreed at a meeting in Hanoi on Friday morning to ask localities to execute a 14-day quarantine policy for Iranian and Italian citizens entering the Southeast Asian country.

Society

-- The People’s Hospital 115 in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 10 on Friday evening stated that a woman had died of myocarditis, or an inflammation of the heart muscle, multiple-organ failure, and respiratory failure at the hospital. She tested negative for the new coronavirus so online reports that she had been killed by the virus were all wrong. 

Business

-- The state budget lost VND150 billion (US$6.48 million) in tax per day in the first two months of 2020 due to the impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic, according to the General Department of Vietnam Customs.

-- Google and Microsoft are accelerating efforts to shift production from China to Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, amid the worsening COVID-19 outbreak, the Nikkei Asian Review reported.

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has recently signed a decision to conduct a general economic survey across the country in 2021.

-- Vietnam’s central city of Da Nang was ranked seventh while Ho Chi Minh City was placed at the 12th position on TripAdvisor’s latest list of the Top 25 Destinations in the World voted by the travel website’s users.

Education

-- Hanoi chairman Nguyen Duc Chung on late Friday afternoon asked all local public schools to reopen on March 9 after weeks of closure to avoid the COVID-19 spread.

Sports

-- Upcoming matches in the first round of Vietnam's top-tier football league V.League 1 will be played behind closed doors to combat the spread of COVID-19, the Vietnam Professional Football JSC (VPF) – which has organized the professional tournaments of Vietnam's football since 2011 – announced on Friday afternoon.

World News

-- Over 84,100 people have been infected with the novel coronavirus and 2,876 killed globally, according to the South China Morning Post. The number of confirmed cases in South Korea has reached 2,337, with 16 deaths.

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