Hanoi authorities plan to take samples for COVID-19 testing from 300,000 residents in high-risk groups and areas from Tuesday to August 17.

It is expected that the number of samples taken from the high-risk areas, including outbreak clusters and those with a high population density, will be 186,000 while 114,000 samples will be collected from the high-risk groups, such as transportation service workers, retailers, drivers, workers in industrial parks, and public sanitation workers.

Dao Huu Than, head of the Department of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control at the Hanoi Center for Disease Control (HCDC), told a meeting on Sunday that the pandemic situation in the capital has remained complicated as the number of cases has increased in recent days, with many of them coming from unknown sources.

Of 1,369 patients documented in the last three weeks, 634 cases were detected during community test programs, accounting for 46 percent.

These cases mostly belonged to outbreak clusters in Tho Am Village in Thanh Tri District, Hoa Voi residential area in Quoc Oai District, and Phung Market in Thach That District.

Khong Minh Tuan, deputy director of the HCDC, emphasized that the city’s health authorities must take advantage of the 15 days under the extended social distancing phase to isolate infection cases from the community.

Deputy director of the Hanoi Department of Health Vu Cao Cuong assigned the HCDC and district-level authorities to assess the risk in each area by categorizing them into three types -- red zones or areas at the highest risk, yellow zones or areas at high risk, and other areas or at-risk areas.

Relevant units are requested to conduct COVID-19 sampling and tests swiftly and return testing results within 24 hours. 

The organization of taking samples for COVID-19 testing will be carried out by the local medical forces and assisted by nearly 1,000 students of the Hanoi Medical College.

“We need to take advantage of every minute, by all means, to make the most of the golden period of social distancing to control the pandemic and bring the city back to the new normal state,” Cuong said.

Vietnam reported on Tuesday morning 5,149 new cases of COVID-19, including 2,490 infections in Ho Chi Minh City, increasing the country’s tally to 224,894 with 75,920 recoveries, according to the Ministry of Health.

Since April 27, the number of locally-infected patients has mounted to 220,957, including 2,080 in Hanoi.

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