HANOI, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Daily COVID-19 tally in Vietnam surged to a new high of 131,817 cases on Saturday, up 6,230 cases from the previous record on Friday, according to its ministry of health.
The new infections, logged in 63 localities nationwide, included 131,780 domestically transmitted and 37 imported.
Vietnamese capital Hanoi remained the epidemic hotspot with 25,013 cases on Saturday, also its new daily record, followed by northern Bac Ninh province with 7,161 cases, and central Nghe An province with 6,460 cases.
On the same day, health authorities also documented 41,441 COVID-19 cases detected earlier in the northern provinces of Phu Tho and Thai Nguyen.
The infections brought the total tally to 4,232,520 with 40,726 deaths. Nationwide, as many as 2,616,002 COVID-19 patients, or 62 percent of the infections, have so far recovered.
Nearly 197.3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the country, including 180.3 million shots on people aged 18 and above, said the ministry.
Vietnam has by far gone through four coronavirus waves of increasing scale, complication and infectivity. As of Saturday, it has registered over 4.2 million locally transmitted COVID-19 cases since the start of the current wave in April 2021, said the health ministry. ■