Vietnam’s Ministry of Health recorded 49 community-based coronavirus patients on Saturday, the second day of the new lunar year.

Forty-seven of the new cases were registered in Hai Duong Province, the country’s current hotbed, while the other two were in Ho Chi Minh City.

Vietnam had spent nearly two months detecting zero local infections before the virus re-emerged on January 28, when the country announced the first two cases.

Six hundred and four domestic cases have been recorded in 13 provinces and cities since then, including 430 in Hai Duong Province, 59 in Quang Ninh Province, 30 in Hanoi, and 36 in Ho Chi Minh City.

Genome sequencing results from the Ho Chi Minh City Hosital for Tropical Diseases showed that the virus found at the Tan Son Nhat airport cluster is the A.23.1 variant, which was first documented in Rwanda in October 2020 and has been detected in the U.S., UAE, Australia, the UK, and Denmark since.

This is also the first detection of the A.23.1 pathogen transmission recorded in Vietnam.

Vietnam has logged 2,195 coronavirus patients, including 1,297 locally-transmitted infections, as of Sunday morning, according to the Ministry of Health.

The total number of recovered patients has reached 1,531.

Thirty-five patients have died of the pathogen, most having suffered chronic underlying medical conditions.

At the time of writing, more than 152,000 people are being quarantined in Vietnam after coming into contact with infected patients or entering the Southeast Asian country from virus-struck regions.

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