The Thanh Hoa People's Committee has received a proposal to this effect from the provincial health department and is "rechecking current regulations and considering the current situation" to decide on it next week, Deputy Chairman Pham Dang Quyen said Saturday.

Thanh Hoa, in north-central Vietnam, is one of three provinces officially labeled as carrying the Covid-19 epidemic on February 1. The other two are the northern province of Vinh Phuc and the south-central province of Khanh Hoa.

Khanh Hoa, home to beach tourism hotspot Nha Trang, could be declared free of Covid-19 after recording no new patient for 30 days, the health ministry said Monday. The province recorded only one patient, a 25-year-old hotel receptionist in Nha Trang who’d interacted with two infected Chinese persons, on January 17. She was discharged from the local hospital on February 4.

Thanh Hoa has also recorded only one patient, another 25-year-old woman who was one of eight employees of Japanese-invested Nihon Plast Company Limited returning from China's Wuhan City, ground zero of the epidemic, on January 17. She was discharged from the local hospital on February 3.

As of Sunday, Thanh Hoa had gone 29 days without recording a new Covid-19 patient.

The health ministry can declare a locality free of the novel coronavirus epidemic if there are no new cases for 28 days and preventative measures against the spread of the virus have been properly deployed.

In Vinh Phuc Province, where most of the nation’s 16 infections to date have been recorded, announced its last infection on February 13, the 50-year-old father of one of the eight returnees from Wuhan. The employee’s mother, sister, cousin and neighbor had earlier been infected, quarantined and treated. The father is Vietnam's last patient still being treated for Covid-19.

Vietnam officially declared the coronavirus outbreak an epidemic on February 1. Of the 16 infections recorded so far, 15 have recovered and been discharged.

The global death toll of the Covid-19 outbreak has reached more than 2,400 and infections topped over 78,000, mainly in China.