The new patients are a 33-year-old woman in Hanoi and a 25-year-old man in the northern province of Bac Ninh.

Both of them are F1 of previously confirmed patients of the ongoing outbreak, and had already been isolated since last month in line with the contact tracing protocol.

With them added to the list, Vietnam has recorded as many as 555 locally transmitted cases of Covid-19 ever since community transmissions reemerged in the nation on January 28 after 55 clean days in a row.

Cases have since then spread to 13 cities and provinces, including the hotspot of Hai Duong and Quang Ninh provinces in the north, with 383 cases and 59 cases each.

HCMC has got 34 infections while Hanoi registered 30.

The Ministry said Friday that the hotspots in in HCMC and Hanoi have "basically been put under control" and the authorities are still intensifying the contact tracing process to prevent infections from spreading further.

For the latest wave of community transmission, it has been confirmed that the U.K. variant is responsible for the outbreak in northern Vietnam and another variant from Rwanda is what has caused infection in the HCMC’s cluster that started at Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

By far, Vietnam has reported 2,142 Covid-19 cases, including 611 active patients.