Vietnam has the 4th highest number of weekly Covid cases worldwide: WHO

A family spends the Reunification holiday at the Saigon Zoo, April 30, 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Nhat Thuc

For the first time in months, Vietnam is among the top four countries with the highest number of recorded Covid-19 cases in a week, the WHO said Wednesday.

VN Express reported that Vietnam has been recording over 571,000 new Covid-19 cases a week on average, which is only behind South Korea (713,000 cases), the U.S. (760,000 cases) and Japan (1.4 million cases), according to a World Health Organization report.

But the report did not mention Vietnam among countries with top Covid deaths.

The WHO said the high numbers of recorded cases in Vietnam were partly because of extra data provided by certain localities, which were recorded since February.

Over the past week, the northern port city of Hai Phong added another 402,830 cases to its tally and the northern province of Thai Nguyen added another 152,485 cases, the Ministry of Health said.

Vietnam records around 2,000 new Covid-19 cases a day on average over the past week, the ministry added.

There has been a spike in the number of new Covid-19 cases as reported on Thursday, with 6,775 new cases, which is three times that of the average number of new cases recorded in the previous week, the ministry said.

However, a data revealed that the spike was the result of Nghe An Province adding another 4,408 new cases to the national database.

Vietnam has recorded over 11.3 million Covid-19 cases so far, with over 43,000 deaths.

The country has lifted all Covid restrictions and life has resumed almost to pre-pandemic normal.