Vietnam detects its highest single day rise in Covid-19 cases

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Jul 1 (EFE).- Vietnam detected 713 fresh Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours, the highest since the start of the pandemic in the country, according to the health ministry on Thursday.

The jump comes at a time when the government is accelerating its vaccination campaign and conducting a mass tests to try to control the fresh outbreak.

According to the Ministry of Health, 464 of these cases were detected in Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s largest urban area with nine million inhabitants.

The city has started a mass testing campaign with the aim of testing half its population by next week.

Vietnam has so far recorded 17,576 coronavirus cases and 81 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

However, more than 14,000 of these cases are from the most recent wave of infections that occurred around the end of April in different parts of the country.

In recent weeks, the country has accelerated its vaccination campaign, with lots received from the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca.

The country expects to have a vaccine manufactured in the country by early September.

So far, a mere 200,000 people have been fully vaccinated in the country, which the authorities have attributed to a lack of supply.

The Communist regime in Hanoi has secured 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 20 million doses of Russian Sputnik V.

It expects to receive another 38.9 million doses under the World Health Organization’s COVAX program for developing countries, and has also been negotiating with Moderna and Pfizer for more vaccines. EFE

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