Doctors in Vietnam have successfully treated and discharged from hospital the country’s most critical COVID-19 patient to date after 70 days of treatment.

The female patient, numbered 1,536, is a 79-year-old resident in District 5 in Ho Chi Minh City.

She had made her entry into Vietnam from the U.S. in the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang on January 13, before her COVID-19 testing result returned positive the next day.

The woman was then sent to the Da Nang Hospital for Lung Diseases, where her health conditions deteriorated shortly after that due to the cytokine storm complications that led to her lung consolidation.

She started losing appetite, building up fluid in her body, and suffering from exhaustion from January 25.

The patient needed the support of the ventilator and the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) from February 2.

Her medical record included 10-year diabetes and high blood pressure.

During her treatment at the Da Nang Hospital for Lung Diseases, the patient was constantly in critical condition, with a prognosis of death having been made for her.

She was also considered the most severe patient since the pathogen had first hit Vietnam in January 2020.

However, the team of 18 doctors, who shared four shifts a day, from six different hospitals in Da Nang did not give up on the patient.

Thanks to their efforts, the patient could be taken off ECMO machine from February 28 and no longer needed ventilator assistance later.

Her hemodynamic situation and other organ operations also gradually stabilized. 

The patient then received nutritional care and rehabilitation.

As her test results recently returned negative for the coronavirus, the Da Nang Hospital for Lung Diseases’ director Le Thanh Phuc announced her full recovery from COVID-19 and discharge from the hospital on Saturday morning.

She is expected to be transferred to Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City by Saturday night for the treatment of her underlying conditions of diabetes and high blood pressure as per her family’s request.

The recovery of patient No. 1,536 is considered as a great success of the Vietnamese medical sector.

Before patient 1,536, doctors in Vietnam had also successfully treated several serious COVID-19 cases, including a 43-year-old British pilot, who caught the virus in Ho Chi Minh City in March 2020, and the country's oldest patient -- an 88-year-old woman.

Vietnam has recorded a total of 2,586 COVID-19 cases, with 2,265 recoveries and 35 virus-related deaths as of Saturday afternoon, according to the Ministry of Health's data.

The majority of the deceased patients had severe pre-existing illnesses.

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