Six more cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have been linked to a major hospital in Hanoi, raising the total number of patients in Vietnam to 194.

All of the new patients are employees of Truong Sinh Company, a catering service provider contracted by Bach Mai Hospital, the Ministry of Health confirmed on Monday morning.

Patient No.189, a 46-year-old woman hailing from the north-central province of Thanh Hoa, works for a unit in charge of distributing boiled water to inpatients’ rooms at the infirmary.

She lives in the same house with her two colleagues, who had both tested positive for COVID-19 earlier.

She had been staying at the hospital’s premises over the past two weeks and started developing a sore throat, coughing, and a fever on March 25.

On March 28, the patient was admitted to the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Dong Anh District, Hanoi and got tested for COVID-19. The result later came back positive.

Patients No. 190 to No. 194 are all women, aged 49, 36, 23, 21, and 42, respectively.

More information on these patients will be announced later, the health ministry stated.

Bach Mai, a special-grade infirmary and the largest general hospital in Vietnam, has been linked to at least 24 COVID-19 patients, including health workers, patients, patients’ visitors, and catering staff.

The infirmary treats a daily average of 6,000 outpatients and 4,000 inpatients, while receiving 4,000 visitors of the sick in addition to having thousands of health workers.

The entire facility is now on lockdown to control the spread of the disease.

The novel coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, has infected over 721,300 people and killed more than 33,900 globally as of Monday morning, according to Ministry of Health statistics.

Vietnam has announced 194 COVID-19 patients so far, with 25 having been discharged from the hospital by Sunday.

No fatality related to the disease has been reported in the country to date.

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