By Le Nga - VNexpress  May 6, 2021 | 07:05 am GMT+7

The National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Dong Anh District, a frontline facility in Covid-19 fight, detected the first case Wednesday after a male doctor at the hospital tested positive for the coronavirus during an overseas trip.

Following his infection, samples of all patients and employees at the hospital have been taken for testing.

On Wednesday evening, 14 cases were detected at the hospital. Nine of them are also patients who were being treated for other diseases and the remaining are four family members of the patients and one medical staff.

The source of the transmission has not been identified yet and the hospital has said cross infections among Covid-19 patients and others inside the hospital could be the reason.

The National Hospital for Tropical Diseases has been responsible for handling all Covid-19 cases in the north ever since the nation’s first outbreak early last year. Nearly 1,000 patients have been treated in the hospital since.

Hanoi on Wednesday locked down the hospital to curb the spread of the disease and protect its medical workers.

The lockdown means that the hospital has stopped receiving patients, no hospital employee would be allowed to go out, but treatment for admitted Covid-19 patients will continue.

Starting April 27, Vietnam has suffered a new Covid-19 community outbreak with different clusters in different localities. Before then, the nation had gone over a month free of community infections.

In the new outbreak, 64 locally-transmitted cases have been recorded in ten localities, including 14 each in nothern Ha Nam and Vinh Phuc provinces and 27 in Hanoi.