Cambodia Identifies 350 new COVID-19 Cases in the Country
An ambulance transports a patient who tested positive for the Covid-19 coronavirus to a hospital in Phnom Penh on May 3, 2021. (
- Sao Phal Niseiy
- May 16, 2021 8:16 AM
As another shipment of Sinovac vaccine doses coming from China arrives
PHNOM PENH--Cambodia on May 16 reported that 350 new COVID-19 cases had been found while nearly 1,380 patients had recovered from the disease.
According to the Ministry of Health’s press statement, nine of the 350 cases involved people returning from abroad. In line with its new policy, the ministry did not indicate where in the country the cases had been identified, leaving it to provincial administrations to issue statements regarding COVID-19 cases found in their jurisdictions.
As of May 16, Cambodia had recorded 22,185 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic more than a year ago, with the number of recoveries reaching 12,120, the Ministry of Health said in its statement.
The ministry also mentioned that three patients had succumbed to COVID-19, bringing the death toll nationwide to 150.
Another batch of 500,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine lands in Cambodia
On May 16, the Ministry of Health also announced that another shipment of 500,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine produced in China had arrived in the country.
Youk Sambath, secretary of state at the Ministry of Health, was on site when the shipment arrived and was quoted by the state-owned Agence Kampuchea Presse as saying that 1 million additional doses of Sinovac vaccine were scheduled to arrive in the country on May 23.
This latest batch of vaccine doses comes just days after 500,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine coming from China landed in the country on May 11. According to Sambath, Cambodia plans to procure 26 million doses to inoculate 13 million people.
Over the past few weeks, Cambodia accelerated the pace of its vaccination drive, deploying military personnel to assist the process in the red zones where a large number of COVID-19 cases had been found.
A total of 2,134,871 people had been vaccinated in the country as of May 15, and more than 1.1 million people had already received their second dose, according to the Ministry of Health’s official figures.
