Traffic on Trường Chinh Street in Hà Nội on Tuesday afternoon. Streets in the capital have reportedly become busier in the last few days while Hà Nội is still in the group of localities with high risk of COVID-19 infection with social distancing measures  in place. —  VNA/VNS Photo Minh Quyết

HÀ NỘI — For the sixth consecutive day, there have been no new cases of COVID-19 recorded in Việt Nam.

The National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control announced on Wednesday morning that by 6am, no new positive patients were detected.

The number of coronavirus confirmed cases remains at 268 with 216 making a full recovery. Right now, there are 52 active cases nationwide.

Of those, 12 patients have tested negative for the SARS-CoV-2 once and eight people twice.

Right now there are just over 67,000 people in quarantine. Of those, 358 people are at hospitals, 18,263 people are at quarantine centres and the remaining 48,401 people are self-quarantining at home.

Social distancing measures are still valid in many localities until at least the end of Wednesday.

Traffic in some high-risk cities like Hà Nội and HCM City has increased in the last few days.

The two cities also asked for the authorities to loosen social distancing measures and lower their infection risk levels.

Việt Nam implemented national social distancing measures during the first half of this month. After April 15, social distancing measures were continued in 12 localities which are identified to have high risks of infection.

The localities classified as high risk are Hà Nội, HCM City and Đà Nẵng, Lào Cai, Quảng Ninh, Bắc Ninh, Ninh Bình (Trường Yên), Quảng Nam, Bình Thuận, Khánh Hòa, Tây Ninh and Hà Tĩnh.

Fifteen localities at medium risk are Bình Dương, Cần Thơ, Đồng Nai, Hà Nam, Hải Phòng, Kiên Giang, Nam Định, Nghệ An, Thái Nguyên, Thừa Thiên-Huế, Sóc Trăng, Lạng Sơn, An Giang, Bình Phước and Đồng Tháp.

Other provinces are in the low risk group. The risk classification is based on density of traffic, population, factories, industrial parks, having borders or not, the number of people going through borders or places where foreigners used to stay, and pandemic response capacity of local authorities.

According to the Health Ministry, nearly 2.5 million COVID-19 cases were confirmed all over the world, of these, more than 171,000 people have died. VNS