Local residents receive medical checks before vaccination at a hospital in Đà Nãng. The central city plans to give full vaccine shots to 90 per cent of the population in 2022.  Photo courtesy of Phan Chung

CENTRAL REGION — Traffic police in the central region stopped a 137-strong caravan of motorbikes returning from HCM City to the central provinces of Thừa Thiên-Huế, Quảng Trị, Hà Tĩnh and Nghệ An early Sunday morning.

The weary travellers were given food, water by the police and made health declarations before moving on to Quảng Trị, Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh provinces.

Made up of regular workers, street vendors and small business owners, they said they left HCM City on motorbike two days ago after the southern city enacted social distancing orders last week.

Thừa Thiên-Huế Province authorities said 99 people from Huế, that were a part of the group, had been tested for coronavirus, and two of them were positive with SARS-COV-2. The remaining were all sent to quarantine centres for two weeks.

At least 10,000 Huế natives living in HCM City have registered to return home.

Medical equipment is taken to a health centre in the central region to provide critical care and treatment for COVID-19 patients. VNS Photo Lê Lâm

Also in the central region, Hội An City in Quảng Nam began social distancing as three positive coronavirus cases were reported on the weekend. The city asked all local residents not to go out of the city from Sunday.

Quick tests were taken on more than 500 close and indirect contact cases through Saturday night.

Quảng Nam authorities have been revving up the vaccination programme with a target of vaccinating 70 per cent of the province’s population by the end of 2022.

The CDC of Quảng Ngãi Province said nine COVID-19 patients were released, having recovered, from quarantine centres on Sunday morning. It said 63 COVID-19 patients had fully recovered after treatment since early June.

Strict preventive measures were tightened at mass quarantine sites in the province where 11 SAR-COV-2 infections were reported on Saturday.

Đà Nẵng has also begun administering 1,170 Pfizer vaccine doses to priority groups.

The Ministry of Health has allocated 70,000 vaccines including Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca for Đà Nẵng City.

Since May, 30,000 people have been injected with COVID-19 vaccines, of which 8,000 had received two shots.

Director of the city’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Dr Tôn Thất Thạnh said the city had prepared medical staff and facilities and could administer vaccines to about 20,000 people each day. — VNS