According to him, all 219 Vietnamese workers who returned to Vietnam from Equatorial Guinea on July 29 have been tested and only 20 of them positive for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, he said.
The Vietnamese workers had been stranded in the African country, with initial information asserting that nearly half of them already confirmed positive for SARS-CoV-2.
Cap explained that many of the workers were confirmed to be suffering from COVID-19 in Equatorial Guinea but had tested negative now possibly because they had recovered from the disease.
However, health care workers are still cautious and strictly deploying disease preventive measures to avoid risks of cross-infection, he said.
He added that all nine critical patients in the group, including six patients with lung damage and three with malaria, had seen their conditions improve.
“We have been closely monitoring such complicated cases as we foresee risks if we ignore other diseases that the COVID-19 patients also have,” Cap said, adding that so far, there were no serious complications.
The 219 workers, the flight crew of eight and four health care workers who escorted the repatriation flight were taken into quarantine at the Kim Chung branch of the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases right after their arrival in Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport.
Earlier, all patients at the hospital were moved to the hospital's campus in downtown Hanoi to make room for, and to be safe from a large number of coronavirus carrying returnees.
