Le Trung Son, Head of the Nam Dan District's Education and Training Department confirmed that the incident took place on Thursday afternoon when Nguyen Van, 10, was attending an online class at home.
"Nguyen Van was using a mobile phone to study when it suddenly exploded after he plugged it into a charger," the official said. "He was injured and was rushed to a local hospital but he died shortly after due to serious injuries."
According to the official, local schools have reopened for three weeks but they are still maintaining one online class a week.
Commenting on the incident, Deputy Minister of Education and Training, Ngo Thi Minh, said that she was saddened to hear about the accident.
"We’ve faced lots of challenges, especially in equipment and technologies when organising online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic in Vietnam," she said. "While the ministry is trying to improve technologies to enhance teaching quality, we can’t manage the quality of the equipment that students are using for studying online at home."
The official said that they were only providing devices to disadvantaged students while most others study with their own equipment.
"At present we’re supplying one million quality tablet computers to support disadvantaged students nationwide in our first donation package," she said.
