The Department of Health of Da Nang will launch its biggest-ever COVID-19 inoculation drive on Wednesday, it said on Monday, the first day that the central Vietnamese city had recorded zero community infections after nearly two months.

The city reported 63 coronavirus cases on Monday, including 26 patients at centralized quarantine facilities, two under home quarantine, and 35 in zoned-off areas, according to the municipal Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control.

City authorities have enforced a shelter-in-place mandate for over 20 days and carried out five large-scale testing rounds during this period, according to the online newspaper of the Vietnamese government VGP News. 

Seventeen out of 56 wards and communes in the city have not documented any cases in the community for 14 consecutive days and have reopened all previously sealed-off areas. 

Since July 10, Da Nang has recorded a total of 4,401 COVID-19 cases.

The municipal health department announced on Monday that it will inject more than 92,000 people with the first doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Wednesday to Saturday, in what it described as the largest-scale COVID-19 vaccination program ever conducted in the city.

People subject to the injection are 18 to 65 years old and live in areas with high population density in Hai Chau, Thanh Khe, and Cam Le Districts.

Personnel of COVID-19 prevention and diplomatic missions, workers at enterprises outside industrial zones, especially companies with a large number of employees, and those frequently in contact with many people will also receive their vaccine jabs in this round.

The city’s health sector will put together 66 injection teams with about 2,000 medical workers at nine locations.

Nationwide, health workers have administered around 22 million vaccine doses, including 567,105 shots on Sunday, since inoculation was rolled out on March 8.

About 3.3 million people have been fully vaccinated.

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