A footwear company in Thu Duc City under Ho Chi Minh City has been suspended from operating after a number of its 21,000 workers contracted the novel coronavirus.

The suspension order came into force on Friday afternoon and will remain effective at Freetrend Industrial Vietnam Co., Ltd until further notice, according to Thu Duc City’s chairman Hoang Tung.

“In the next few days, a decision will be made on whether the company can reopen or not,” said Tung.

“If the company’s pandemic prevention and control does not meet requirements, the downtime must be extended.”

All of COVID-19 patients and direct and indirect contacts detected at the company had been sent to hospitals and centralized quarantine facilities on Wednesday and Thursday, while contact tracing continued on Friday, according to Tung.

All of the company’s workers had already been sampled for COVID-19 testing, while a part of them had also been vaccinated against the viral disease, previously.

The Ministry of Health reported 598 new local coronavirus cases on Saturday morning, including 520 patients in Ho Chi Minh City.

The latest infections have taken the country’s tally to 26,608 cases, with 8,984 recoveries and 110 deaths, since early 2020.

Since April 27, when the pandemic’s fourth wave erupted in Vietnam, the country has documented 23,126 infections.

Ho Chi Minh City is leading the table in this round with 10,815 infections so far.

The city went into a new strict social distancing period under the prime minister’s Directive No. 16 on Friday.

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