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According to the ministry's report, the national caseload has so far increased to 11,456,558.
On September 17, an additional 69,654 more patients recovered from the disease, raising the number of recoveries in the country to over 10.57 million.
On Saturday evening, one death from Covid-19 was recorded, raising the country's total fatalities to 43,138, accounting for 0.4 per cent of total infections.
By September 17, the country had injected over 259 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines.
The Ministry of Health has demanded stricter disease prevention and accelerated Covid-19 vaccinations in a document recently sent to provincial-level administrations, epidemiology and Pasteur institutes, and hospitals nationwide.
According to the ministry, the pandemic has been basically put under control in the country, but the number of new infections, hospitalisations, and deaths have been on the rise recently, with over 2,000 infections documented daily on average and new sub-variants of Omicron including BA.4, BA.5, BA2.74, and BA 2.12.1 that are more contagious than the original strains recorded in many localities.
