A health worker checks the temperature of a citizen at one of the city's checkpoints in Ngũ Hành Sơn District, the central province of Đà Nẵng. — VNA/VNS Photo Trần Lê Lâm

HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam recorded a total of 41 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday afternoon, 40 of them linked to Đà Nẵng, bringing the country’s total caseload to 713.

One of the new patients is a one-year-old child, and another a police officer who was guarding a criminal who was in Đà Nẵng Hospital.

Together with two cases in Quảng Nam also related to Đà Nẵng reported earlier in the morning, Wednesday’s tally of 43 became one of the highest daily spikes in local cases in Việt Nam since the beginning of the pandemic.

Six cases – Patient 673 to 678 – were members of a family with ages ranging from 10 to 41 in the northern provinces of Bắc Giang and Lạng Sơn, bringing the total number of localities reporting positive cases in the country to 11, including the two biggest cities of Hà Nội and HCM City.

They all previously travelled to Đà Nẵng.

The six patients are currently being quarantined and treated at the second campus of the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hà Nội.

The 34 cases discovered in Đà Nẵng include 14 people who were in direct contact with confirmed patients related to Đà Nẵng Hospital, 10 who are currently patients at the hospital, seven caregivers at the hospital, one police officer working at the hospital, one health worker at Đà Nẵng Maternity and Paediatrics Hospital, and one resident of Liên Chiểu District.

With the latest cases, the number of community infections recorded in Việt Nam since July 25 – the day the first local case was confirmed in Đà Nẵng after three months being virus-free – has risen to 264.

The only imported case reported today was Patient 679, a 44-year-old male, who was on the same flight from Russia on July 11 that has so far spawned 17 COVID-19 cases.

He is currently being treated at Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu Hospital in southern Việt Nam.

Earlier in the afternoon, Hoa Lư District’s medical centre in the northern province of Ninh Bình announced three recoveries – patients 391, 393 and 395 – all of them Vietnamese citizens in their 20s who lived in Russia and returned to Việt Nam on a repatriation flight on July 17.

This brings the number of recovered patients in the country to 318, accounting for more than half of the official caseload.

The recovered patients will have to self-isolate at home for another 14 days.

Việt Nam’s current COVID-19 death toll stands at eight, all elderly people with chronic health issues.

More than 120,000 people who have either come into contact with confirmed cases or returning from virus-affected areas are being quarantined in hospitals, centralised quarantine camps and other facilities across the country. — VNS