People returning from the New Year holidays are being encouraged to take ATK tests as a precaution against COVID-19. Meanwhile, public health authorities are re-organizing healthcare resources in preparation for an expected increase in daily Covid infections.
Dr. Chawetsan Namwat, the director of the Emergency Health Hazard and Disease Control Division, Department of Disease Control, said the most recent meeting on the COVID-19 situation has deemed that infection numbers remain on a downward course. However, public health authorities remain focused on an expected rise in infections, especially in the second week after New Year’s when the daily number of new infections could reach as high as 30,000 in the worst-case scenario.
Dr. Chawetsan said the meeting of the Ministry of Public Health’s emergency operations center this morning (3 Jan) analyzed information relevant to Covid infection clusters in Ubon Ratchathani, Kalasin, and Chonburi, and determined that the main contributing factor for the outbreaks was mass crowding. The number of people in Thailand infected by the Omicron variant of coronavirus reached 1,551 on Sunday (2 Jan) and 47 provinces have reported Omicron cases. Despite the rising share of Thai Covid patients infected by the Omicron variant, none of these patients have had to be put on ventilators.
According to Dr. Chawetsan, there are about 170,000 beds within the public health infrastructure and expansions can be made to make roughly 200,000 more beds available for Covid patients. The home isolation model and lessons learned from past outbreaks will also be applied. Nonetheless, businesses, as well as public agencies, are being asked to implement the Work from Home model for their employees for the time being. People who are returning from New Year holidays or other trips are urged to take ATK tests for Covid, and to monitor themselves if they have visited high-risk venues. (NNT)
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