The Ministry of Health has reported first two Zika cases in Khanh Hoa Province and HCM City.

The first patient is a 64 year-old woman in Nha Trang City in the southern central province of Khanh Hoa. She had complained of a fever and headache on March 26, which later broke out into a rash in her legs, while also suffering from sore eyes. 

After two days of taking medicine at home but seeing no improvement, she was taken to Khanh Hoa Tropical Diseases Hospital. The result of a test on March 31 at the Pasteur Nha Trang Institute showed that she had the Zika virus. The same result was announced by the National Institute of Hygiene And Epidemiology on April 4.

The other case is a 33 year-old woman in HCM City. She exhibited symptoms associated with the Zika virus on March 29 and three rounds of tests confirmed she is Zika-positive. She is two-month pregnant.

Head of the ministry's Department of Preventative Medicine Tran Dac Phu, said the patients were in stable condition while no further infections among their relatives and neighbours have been reported.

At a press conference in Hanoi on April 5 morning, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said the health ministry has instructed Khanh Hoa and HCM City authorities to declare the epidemic at the ward level and raise the warning alert to level 2.

The Nha Trang and HCM City Pasteur Institutes are coordinating with local health authorities to conduct preventive and counter-epidemic measures.

The ministry also recommended other localities to raise warning levels and take actions responding to the epidemic under the scenario 2 of the Zika-virus epidemic action plan.

In early March, an Australian man was tested positive for the Zika virus after a 10-day visit to Vietnam.

The man arrived in Vietnam on February 26 and then travelled to the provinces of Lam Dong, Khanh Hoa and Binh Thuan and HCM City. Two days after returning to Australia, he showed symptoms of Zika infection, including fever, rash, headache, muscle aches, conjunctivitis and nausea.