At a meeting of its Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention on Friday afternoon, Tran Xuan Duong, vice chairman of the province People's Committee, said students’ safety must be ensured and schools need to hold classes online for the year-end and high school graduation exams from May to July.

By Friday afternoon, seven people in Ha Nam had been diagnosed with Covid-19, all related to the outbreak in Dao Ly Commune in Ly Nhan District.

Nguyen Thanh Duong, director of the Ha Nam Center for Disease Control, said the province has 10 cases of Covid-19, three of which the Ministry of Health has not announced yet. The three were in quarantine and on Saturday morning, they were tested positive for the coronavirus once.

The outbreak began when patient 2899, a 28-year-old man, returned to Vietnam from Japan on flight VJ3613, arriving at Da Nang Airport on April 7 and being quarantined on entry.

After 14 days of quarantine and three negative tests, he returned to Ha Nam on April 22. But on April 24, he began to cough and have a fever and sore throat, and tested positive for Covid-19 on April 29.