The woman, who hails from the northern province Bac Giang, was working in Bangkok. On March 19, before returning to Vietnam, she had joined a party with the family of a 25-year-old Vietnamese woman who lives in Thailand and had tested positive for Covid-19 on March 18 after returning to Vietnam. 

The 29-year-old woman landed March 20 in Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport on Vietnam Airlines fight VN618. 

She was sent to a centralized quarantine area in Ninh Binh Province, around 60 kilometers south of Hanoi. On March 31, she developed high fever, but had no cough or breathing difficulty.

Her swab samples tested Covid-19 positive, but six other people in the same room in the quarantine area who had their samples tested on the night of April 1 were found negative for the novel coroavirus.

"Patient 240" is Saturday’s third confirmation, the two earlier ones being a 17-year-old girl returning from Thailand and one related to Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital.

Of the 240 Covid-19 cases, 90 have been discharged and 150 are active. Many of the active cases are Vietnamese nationals returning from abroad, mostly Europe and the U.S., foreigners coming from the same regions and those who’d come in contact with both groups of people.

The Covid-19 pandemic has so spread to 205 countries and territories, claiming more than 59,200 lives.