HANOI (REUTERS) – Vietnam’s health ministry on Wednesday (July 29) reported eight new locally transmitted coronavirus cases linked to three hospitals in the central city of Danang, taking the outbreak to 30 infections since the virus resurfaced at the weekend.

The Southeast Asian nation is back on high alert after authorities on Saturday confirmed that new cases had appeared in Danang, the country’s first community infections since April.

Vietnam has registered a total of 446 coronavirus cases altogether, with no deaths. Nearly 83 per cent of the infected patients have recovered, the health ministry said.

Vietnam has suspended all flights to and from Danang for 15 days after at least 14 cases of the novel coronavirus were detected in the city, the government said on Tuesday.

The coastal city, a tourism hot spot, had reintroduced social distancing measures over the weekend after the government confirmed the first domestically-transmitted cases of the coronavirus in more than three months.

With more than 95 million people, Vietnam is the most populous country in the world to have recorded no Covid-19 fatalities.

Thanks to strict quarantine measures and an aggressive and widespread testing programme, Vietnam has kept its virus total to 438 cases.

Vietnam is still closed to foreign tourism, but there had been a surge in domestic travellers looking to take advantage of discounted flights and holiday packages to local resorts.

On Monday, the government said it had requested the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) to allow domestic airlines to significantly increase the number of flights from Danang to 11 other Vietnamese cities in order to help evacuate 80,000 people, mostly tourists.

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