Public hospitals in 14 provinces now treating Bangkok Covid patients

Dr Kiartiphum Wongrachit, permanent secretary at the Public Health Ministry, said the ministry had decided to expand treatments to hospitals in 14 provinces around the capital to help Covid-19 patients who could not contact the 1330 hotline, or who had to wait too long for treatment at hospitals in Bangkok.

Kiartiphum said the hospitals in the 14 provinces are under the Disease Control Department and Mental Health Department. The hospitals will treat people diagnosed with mild Covid-19 symptoms by administering either Thai herbs or Favipiravir anti-viral drug and other medicines depending on their condition and send them home to recover under the “diagnosed, medicine administered, and done” policy of the Public Health Ministry.

The 14 provinces are Pathum Thani, Nonthaburi, Ayutthaya, Nakhon Nayok, Saraburi, Angthong, Lop Buri, Samut Prakan, Samut Songkram, Samut Sakhon, Suphan Buri, Nakhon Pathom, Chonburi and Chachoengsao.

Starting this month, the Public Health Ministry has changed its policy to treat Covid-19 patients with “green”, or mild, conditions as outpatients.

Kiartiphum said Covid-19 patients from Bangkok do not have to worry about expenses for seeking treatments at hospitals outside the medical facilities where they are entitled to free treatment. The Public Health Ministry has consulted all the healthcare funds to provide free treatments to all Covid-19 patients under the OPD treatment policy, Kiartiphum added.

He said the hospitals in the 14 provinces had started taking care of Covid-19 patients from Bangkok beginning Friday and they would be able to treat about 18,650 patients a day.

The permanent secretary said he expected the patient overload in Bangkok to ease once the new policy was implemented for two weeks.

He added that it would be safe to allow patients to isolate and recover at home because the Omicron variant does not cause severe symptoms and only 0.5 per cent of patients who isolate at home risk developing more serious symptoms.

Dr Thongchai Kiratihatthayakorn, deputy permanent secretary for Public Health, said Bangkok residents who tested positive with antigen test kits must wear two layers of face masks and travel in their personal vehicles to a public hospital in one of the 14 provinces.

They must meet doctors in the Acute Respiratory Infection clinics of the hospitals for diagnosis, and they will be administered medicine depending on their symptoms.

The patients will then be sent home and the hospitals will remotely follow up on their condition within 48 hours, Thongchai added.