Mild, asymptomatic cases to be removed from daily Covid-19 count: DDC
The Department of Disease Control (DDC) has removed ATK results from its daily Covid-19 count because most of these cases are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, a senior official said.
Dr Sumanee Wacharasint, director of the risk communication and health behaviour development division, said on Saturday that the DDC learned that most people who test positive using rapid antigen test kits (ATK) have few or no symptoms.
Hence, the DDC has stopped adding these results to its daily Covid-19 count, said Sumanee, who is also assistant spokesperson of the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA).
She added that the figures reported on the DDC dashboard have been based on a two-week average for a while.
The CCSA, meanwhile, announces figures reported to it on the previous day, she said.
She added that the removal of ATK results from the dashboard would have no effect on the country’s estimate of Covid cases because the figures would now focus on people with severe symptoms who need hospitalisation.
Sumanee added that the new system of counting Covid-19 cases will be applied from the beginning of next month.
She said the DDC will propose to the emergency operating committee of the Public Health Ministry that its daily dashboard will only include people with severe symptoms who must be admitted to hospital.
If the committee agrees, the proposal will be forwarded to the CCSA for approval, she said.