Vietnam reports 1,716 new Covid-19 cases as total infections now has gone above 10.7 million on Thursday (May 19)

Medical staff administer doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine to youths between the age of 12 and 17 in Hanoi. - AFP

HANOI, May 19 (Xinhua): Vietnam recorded 1,716 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, down by 115 from Wednesday, according to its Ministry of Health.

Among the new infections, one was an imported case and the rest were domestically transmitted cases reported in 48 provinces and cities.

The Vietnamese capital Hanoi remained the pandemic hotspot with 381 new cases recorded on Thursday, followed by the central Nghe An province with 126 and the northern Phu Tho province with 111.

Also on Thursday, health authorities in the northern Bac Giang province reported 1,012 previously detected Covid-19 infections.

The newly recorded infections brought the total tally to 10,704,524 with 43,073 deaths.

Nationwide, as many as 9,382,881 Covid-19 patients, or nearly 88 percent of the total infections, have so far recovered.

More than 218.1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the Southeast Asian country, including roughly 197.7 million shots on people aged 18 and above, according to the ministry.

Vietnam has by far gone through four coronavirus waves of increasing scale, complication and infectivity.

As of Thursday, it has registered nearly 10.7 million locally transmitted Covid-19 cases since the start of the current wave of infections in April 2021, said the health ministry. - Xinhua