Vietnamese man accused of spreading COVID-19 jailed for 5 years

A Vietnamese man was sentenced to five years in jail on Monday for "spreading dangerous infectious diseases" after he broke a 21-day COVID-19 quarantine rule, the state-run Vietnam News Agency reports.

The 28-year-old man left Ho Chi Minh City for the southern province of Ca Mau, Vietnam News Agency said, where he "infected eight people, one of whom died due to the virus after one month of treatment." He is the third person in Vietnam to be accused of spreading COVID-19; the other two were sentenced to 18-month and two-year suspended jail terms, Reuters reports.

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Vietnam took aggressive measures to fight COVID-19 — there was mass testing, extensive contact tracing, strict quarantine regulations, and border restrictions. Since April, there has been a massive increase in cases, and most of Vietnam's 536,000 infections and 13,385 deaths have been reported in the last few months.

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Ho Chi Minh City is the hotspot, with more than 260,000 recorded cases, while Ca Mau has reported just 191 cases and two deaths since the start of the pandemic.