Nearly 4.7 percent of samples taken for COVID-19 testing in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday returned positive for the coronavirus, marking an increase of 2.7 percentage points from that announced two days before.

Functional forces tested 180,944 samples on Friday, according to the city’s COVID-19 portal.

Of the total, 8,480 came back positive, equivalent to around 4.7 percent.

All of the newly-detected cases were community-based.

Binh Tan District accounted for the majority of cases with 777 infections, followed by District 1 with 736, Tan Binh District with 696, District 12 with 669, and Binh Chanh District with 583.

Friday was the fifth consecutive day that Ho Chi Minh City has recorded a 100-percent community-based infection rate since the shelter-in-place came into effect in the city on August 23.

It was also the day with the highest number of cases discovered in the community since August 23 and a record high of new cases ever.

Previously, Nguyen Hoai Nam, deputy director of the municipal Department of Health, announced at a press conference on Wednesday that the infection rate that day dropped to below 2 percent among tested samples, about 2.7 percentage points lower than Friday’s figure.

City authorities have continued applying the citywide COVID-19 testing drive, conducting rapid antigen tests on people in very high- and high-risk areas and real-time PCR tests on residents of lower-risk neighborhoods.

From 5:00 pm Thursday to 5:00 pm Friday, the National System for COVID-19 Case Management recorded 8,499 new COVID-19 cases in Ho Chi Minh City, increasing its total infections in the new bout that erupted in Vietnam on April 27 to 241,084.

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