Thailand’s Omicron wave ‘stabilising’ despite global surge
Thailand has avoided the surge in Omicron cases seen across the globe thanks to tight health measures and public cooperation, a Senate member said on Monday.
The Omicron outbreak in Thailand has stabilised, defying predictions of a worst-case scenario for Thailand’s fourth wave of Covid-19, said Chalermchai Boonyaleephan, deputy chairman of the Senate committee on public health.
Doctors had earlier expressed concern that the highly contagious Omicron strain would result in up to 20,000 new cases per day as people travelled home and back to work after the long New Year holiday.
The worst-case scenario was expected about 14 days after New Year’s Eve celebrations.
But from January 14 to 17, the daily caseload in Thailand started to stabilize instead of spiking like in Europe and the United States, Chalermchai said.
On Monday, the caseload actually fell. The Public Health Ministry reported 6,929 new Covid-19 cases during the previous 24 hours, compared to 8,077 new cases announced on Sunday.
Chalermchai said Thailand’s success in preventing a sharp rise in cases came from a combination of nine measures.
These were: the work-from-home policy, ATK screening for employees who had to go into work, mandatory face masks for police and the public, eating meals separately, avoiding crowded or poorly ventilated areas, faster mass vaccination, tighter disease controls, taking daily showers and not hugging one another like Westerners, and warm weather compared to winter in Western nations.
