E Hospital reopens as one patient declared Covid-19 negative

At a meeting of the National Steering Committee on Covid-19 Prevention and Control in Ha Noi on August 20, Acting Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said the patient had tested negative twice on August 19 and twice on August 20 at the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

Test result at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) also showed the same result on August 20 evening. He is now under quarantine at a branch of the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Dong Anh district, Ha Noi.

He tested positive for the virus for the first time by the NIHE on August 19 morning and he was reported to become the 994th Covid-19 case the next day.

In the past one month, the patient did not leave his residence in Thanh Ba district, the northern province of Phu Tho. His family members neither traveled to pandemic-hit areas.

Patient No.994, who had checkups at the hospital, was removed from the list of Covid-19 cases after he tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 several times, according to the Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Health has decided to temporarily close State-owned Hospital E after news on the patient's SARS-CoV-2 positive result, E Hospital stopped receiving new patients from 8pm on August 19 and Covid-19 containment protocol was immediately imposed throughout the hospital.

The Treatment Sub-committee under the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control tasked the Director of the E Hospital to seriously comply with safety and quarantine regulations in order to avoid transmission among health workers, patients, and the community. 

The Ha Noi Department of Health reported that from July 25, Ha Noi confirmed 36 infection cases including 12 community infections and 25 imported cases with zero fatality.

The city has reviewed 100,179 returnees from Da Nang of whom 66,914 were tested for SARS-CoV-2 with one confirmed case (Patient 979)./.