Vietnam’s economic hub Ho Chi Minh City has documented 125 infections of the coronavirus variant Omicron since last December, without severe cases or deaths, local health authorities reported.

Among these infections, 115 were imported and 10 were found in the community, with all of them being asymptomatic or slightly symptomatic, the municipal Department of Heath said on Friday.

Five first imported cases of Omicron in the southern city were announced on December 31, 2021, before the three first infections in the community were recorded there, as well as for the whole country, on January 19, 2022. 

Nationwide, 192 Omicron infections cases have been detected in different localities since the first imported case was confirmed in the capital city of Hanoi on December 21 last year, the Ministry of Health reported.

Ho Chi Minh City is topping the list with 92 patients, followed by Quang Nam, Quang Ninh, and Hanoi with 27, 20 and 14 cases, respectively.

The highly contagious Omicron coronavirus strain, first detected in South Africa in November 2021, has spread to 165 countries and territories worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported.

The latest subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, has now been detected in 57 countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

The BA.2 subvariant is more contagious than the currently dominant BA.1 version and will likely become more common, CNBC cited Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, as saying on Tuesday.

Daily COVID-19 infections have continuously increased in different localities in Vietnam over the past several days, with over 26,487 cases reported nationwide on Friday, the highest since October 2021, the ministry’s data shows.

On the same day, the daily death toll was 96, compared to 72 on Thursday and 93 on Wednesday. 

Such increases were recorded after local people had the nine-day Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, from January 29 until February 6, during which travel and in-person contacts became more prevalent than before.

The same increase in daily infections was seen in Ho Chi Minh City, with 260 cases confirmed on Friday, compared to 241 on Thursday and 219 on Wednesday, the health ministry said.

However, the city’s daily mortalities have sharply fallen, to three on Friday from 67 two months ago. 

Since the pandemic hit Vietnam in early 2020, Ho Chi Minh City has documented 517,002 COVID-19 cases and 19,916 fatalities, the ministry reported on Friday.

Nationwide, 2,457,170 infections, with 2,212,669 recoveries and 38,784 deaths, have been recorded.  

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!