Health workers take samples for COVID-19 testing. (Photo: VNA)

The municipal health sector is trying to optimize the social distancing period, which will end on August 23, to detect infected cases as soon as possible.

The target groups include freight forwarders, traders at markets and supermarkets, public sanitation workers, taxi drivers, and workers at industrial parks.

The move comes as COVID-19 continues to spread in the city with many locally transmitted cases.

More than 1,000 of nearly 1,800 cases recorded in the city since the fourth wave of COVID-19 erupted in late April were within the community.