"Patient 417" hails from the northern province of Thai Binh. She landed at Can Tho International Airport in the Mekong Delta on a repatriation flight on July 9 and was quarantined in the delta's Bac Lieu Province upon arrival.

The girl had her samples taken for coronavirus tests two times on July 10 and 16 and the results came back negative. On Friday, her samples were sent to the HCMC Pasteur Institute for third testing and the results turned out positive. She is being treated at Bac Lieu’s General Hospital.

Vietnam has recorded four new infections on Saturday, including three repatriates from Russia and a Da Nang man, "Patient 416", Vietnam's first Covid-19 community transmission since April 16.

An expert panel of the Health Ministry on Saturday afternoon stated that "Patient 416" is now in critical condition and faces high death risk. He is now on ventilators and connected with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, which involves pumping blood out of the body and to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back.

This is the third Covid-19 patient in Vietnam relying on ECMO. The other two are "Patient 19", a 64-year-old Vietnamese woman, and "Patient 91," a British pilot, both discharged after treatment.

The country has recorded 417 infections, of these 365 have recovered. Of the 52 active cases, six people have tested negative for the first time and two have done so for the second time.

Vietnam has operated 60 repatriation flights since April, bringing home more than 16,000 citizens stranded in 50 countries and territories. Earlier this month Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc instructed government agencies to bring home another 14,000 Vietnamese citizens.

The pandemic has killed 641,800 people globally.