Thailand told to widen quarantine for coronavirus cases
Thailand has done well in preventing an outbreak of the new coronavirus but the country can do better by placing both the infected and those suspected of being infected in quarantine as the virus could shed even before an infected person showing symptoms of the disease, said a clinical expert form Hong Kong.
“The most important thing now for Thailand and other countries outside of China is to make sure that it remains an exported case scenario, that you contain the imported cases in your country,” said Gabriel Leung, Dean of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong.
“But as long as you’ve traffic between two places, you are inevitably going to have some imported cases”.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Prince Mahidol Award Conference in Bangkok on Thursday (January 30), he said the number of contracting cases in Thailand was currently very low, indicating that Thailand had the capacity to keep the virus from spreading.
Fourteen cases have been confirmed in Thailand, according to the Ministry of Public Health. Five have already been discharged and returned to China with the rest remain isolated in hospitals.
Dr Leung said that Thailand was tackling the virus in the right direction including virus contract tracing, medical surveillance and monitoring.
However, for confirmed and future cases, Thailand should place them in quarantine even if they have yet to show symptoms as an effective way to prevent the virus from spreading, he said.
“Once they are quarantined, think about swabbing them, testing them every day,” said Dr Leung. “Because there are some suggestions that they could shed virus during the incubation period”.
Persons infected by the new coronavirus tend to shed the virus when they first have some insignificant symptoms such as sore throat. On the other way round, people infected with SARs don’t shed the virus until they have developed symptoms, such as high fever, making it’s much more difficult to control the spread of coronaviral when compared to SARs".
“If you want to improve on what you’re doing, you should quarantine the infected and test them every day,” said Dr Leung.
He suggested that the best way to protect individuals from viral infection is to wash hands frequently, not shaking hands and wear face masks when in crowded places. Getting information from reliable sources is important too, he said.
“We are not only combating an epidemic, we’re also combating fake news on social media, which actually make controlling the epidemic more difficult. This is a twin challenge,” he said.
“Everybody should keep a high sense of alertness. But the most important thing is to protect themselves and to protect others around them by staying calm. Keep calm, be rational and don’t believe in everything you read in media. Trust people who have dedicated their whole life to keep the public healthy” he concluded.
