Vietnam confirmed two new cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Saturday morning, including one linked to a major hospital in Hanoi.

The new cases, announced by the Ministry of Health, raised the national tally to 239, with 86 patients having recovered.

Patient No. 238 is a 17-year-old Vietnamese girl from Thach Ha District, located in the north-central province of Ha Tinh.

She previously lived with patient No. 210 in Thailand.

She departed from Bangkok on March 17 before entering Vietnam on a coach via Cha Lo Border Gate in the north-central province of Quang Binh on March 18.

She was taken to a local quarantine facility upon her arrival before being transferred to another facility in Thach Long Commune, located in Huong Khe District of Ha Tinh, where she tested positive for the novel coronavirus after being sampled by the provincial Center for Disease Control.

Another sample sent to the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology also returned the same result.

The patient is currently being quarantined and treated at Cau Treo General Hospital in Huong Son District, Ha Tinh.

Patient No. 239 is a 71-year-old Vietnamese man from in An Hoa Commune, Tam Duong District, located in the northern province of Vinh Phuc.

On March 11, he went to the Gastroenterology Department at Bach Mai Hosiptal in Hanoi for cancer treatment and returned home on the same day.

Seven days later, the patients came back to the hospital for further treatment at the Oncology Department before returning to Vinh Phuc on March 19.

While he was at the hospital, the patient bought food at its canteen, where previous COVID-19 cases had been confirmed.

From March 19 to 26, he remained at home and self-quarantined for a further two days until March 28, when he was admitted to Vinh Phuc General Hospital due to a slight fever.

He was sampled by the Center for Disease Control of Vinh Phuc on April 1, which was sent to the Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology a day later and turned out positive for the virus.

The patient is being quarantined at treated at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Dong Anh District, Hanoi.

Patient No. 239 is the 43rd infection case that can be traced to Bach Mai Hospital, a special-grade hospital and the largest general hospital in Vietnam.

On Friday evening, the Ministry of Health announced four cases, including a Vietnamese woman returning from Paris, two Britons who visited Buddha Bar in Ho Chi Minh City, and a Swedish man in Hanoi who had been traveling across Vietnam in March.

Eighty-six out of 239 confirmed cases in Vietnam have recovered and been discharged from the hospitals.

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

The novel coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, has infected over one million people and killed more than 58,800 globally as of Saturday morning, according to Ministry of Health statistics.

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