As many as 3,200 beds at a auniversity dormitory in Ho Chi Minh City have been made available, with thousands more to come, for people needing to be quarantined for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

The beds are located in Buildings G3, G4, H1, and H2 at Dormitory A of the Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM) in Thu Duc District, Tang Huu Thuy, director of the dormitory management center, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Thursday.

VNU-HCM has two dormitory complexes – A and B – at its Thu Duc Campus.

Students have been asked to temporarily move out of both dormitories to make space for quarantine.

Municipal authorities had planned to requisition the dormitories, as well as the VNU-HCM Center for National Defense and Security Training located within the Thu Duc Campus, and turn them into COVID-19 quarantine camps since February 29.

Accordingly, the VNU-HCM dorms will offer 40,000 beds for quarantined people.

As VNU-HCM students have been asked to stay home since after the Lunar New Year, or Tet, holiday in January due to COVID-19 outbreaks, military forces were mobilized to collect and move students’ belongings from their dorm rooms to storage rooms in order to clear space for accommodating quarantined people, Thuy said.

“Students do not have to return to the dormitory to pick up their belongings as the management center will pack, seal, and protect their property and will return them to the students when they eventually get back,” Thuy affirmed.

The dorm arrangement was finished and ready to accommodate people subjected to quarantine on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Center for National Defense and Security Training had started admitting quarantined people to its 1,000-bed lodgings on Wednesday.

The center is normally used to run compulsory training courses on national defense and security for university students in the southern metropolis. It trains about 15,000 students per year.

Within the past three days, VNU-HCM has put into use 4,200 beds for the city’s COVID-19 quarantine demand.

According to the municipal health department, 20,000 more beds at the VNU-HCM dorms are set to be made use of in the future for more quarantine accommodations.

Vietnam has so far confirmed 85 cases of COVID-19 infections, with 16 having fully recovered and walked out of the hospital free of the virus by February 26.

Ho Chi Minh City currently has 17 patients confirmed to be carrying the virus.

A patient in the northern province of Ninh Binh was released from the hospital on Friday morning after testing negative for the novel coronavirus for three times.

He was the first and only recovery so far among the 69 ‘second-phase’ cases confirmed in the country since March 6.

No deaths from COVID-19 have been reported in Vietnam so far.

The novel coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, has infected nearly 245,000 people and killed more than 10,000 others around the world, according to Ministry of Health statistics.

Over 87,000 patients have recovered worldwide.

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