Here are today’s leading news stories:

COVID-19 Updates

-- Vietnam’s Ministry of Health reported 9,706 COVID-19 infections, including 4,046 cases in Ho Chi Minh City, on Saturday, raising the national tally to 746,678, with 516,449 recoveries and 18,400 deaths.

-- State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc arrived in Hanoi along with more than one million Abdala COVID-19 vaccine doses on Saturday night following his working trip to Cuba and the U.S. from September 18 to 24.

-- Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City are expected to remove all COVID-19 checkpoints and barricades along local streets and alleys by September 30 and will only keep the checkpoints at its gateways.

-- Many people who went to several vaccination sites in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday afternoon were sent home for lacking an invitation paper. Many of them said that their neighborhood leaders had told them to come to these locations for their second doses.

-- The National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control has adjusted the pandemic response strategy in the direction of safe and flexible adaptation to COVID-19 as the country strives to return to 'a new normal' by the end of September, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, who is head of the committee, said at a meeting on Saturday.

Society

-- Authorities in the north-central province of Nghe An on Saturday evacuated many residents in areas that were severely flooded following heavy downpours.

-- An 18-year-old man who was a volunteer in pandemic prevention and control efforts in the north-central province of Ha Tinh was killed in a road crash on his way home on Saturday.

-- Ho Chi Minh City police have arrested two suspects for creating fake email addresses of local businesses and tricking a U.S. company into wiring more than US$94,000.

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