The Ho Chi Minh City Centre for Disease Control and Prevent (HCDC) has announced that a total of 701 individuals who came into close contact with the southern city’s latest novel coronavirus (COVID-19) cases have tested negative for the virus.

This comes after patient No.1,347, an English language teacher who works at Key English centre in Ho Chi Minh City, came into direct contact with an acquaintance who is a male flight attendant for Vietnam Airlines. Indeed, the flight attendant had been in the process of being quarantined in Ho Chi Minh City and has since been confirmed to be patient No.1,342.

There has also been two additional cases detected, including a female student of the English language teacher and a one-year-old child who came into close contact with the teacher.

Since November 28, Ho Chi Minh City has recorded a total of four COVID-19 cases, representing a chain of infections that originated from a single imported COVID-19 case and went on to be spread among the wider community.

At present, medical workers are in the process of conducting contact tracing whilst striving to swiftly implement concentrated isolation procedures for all individuals who came into close contact with the COVID-19 patients.

The southern city’s local authorities also issued an urgent notice to residents regarding the specific locations that the positive cases had visited, as well as disinfecting each of these places and residential areas where the COVID-19 patients live.

Furthermore, all flight attendants of Vietnam Airlines have been transferred to a concentrated isolation facility in Cu Chi whilst the local airline's current quarantine facility is to be shut down in order to be thoroughly disinfected.