Amid the rapid spread of the coronavirus outbreak around the world, Vietnam has announced that all 16 infected patients in the country were discharged from hospital and declared cured, Al Jazeera reports.

All 16 patients, including the oldest who is 73, had been cured and discharged from the hospital.

For the past 15 days, including on Friday, February 28, the government also detected no new cases of infections, the last one having been reported on February 13, even as a village north of Hanoi remains under a 20-day lockdown.

"If fighting COVID-19 has been a war, then we have won the first round but not the entire war because the situation can be very unpredictable," Vietnam's Ministry of Health quoted Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam as saying, referring to the illness caused by the coronavirus, during an online conference with city and provincial officials on Tuesday.

Worldwide, the outbreak has already killed almost 3,000 and infected more than 83,000 as of Saturday.