THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Contagion must be curbed before rainy season, Chula expert warns

Contagion must be curbed before rainy season, Chula expert warns

A clinical virologist at Chulalongkorn University says Thailand’s measures against Covid-19 have been “moderately effective”, but more must be done to get the deadly disease under control.

“Currently the reproduction number (R0) of Covid-19 in Thailand has come down from R0=2.5 to R0=1.5,” Dr Yong Poovorawan, of Chula’s Faculty of Medicine, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday (March 1).
“This means that an infected person in Thailand will spread the virus to an average 1.5 people, instead of 2.5 people which was the Covid-19 infection rate before we employed social distancing measures.
“However, this rate remains unsatisfactory until we bring it down to 1 or below.”

To achieve this, he said, we must strictly observe the following measures:

1) Maximise the speed of diagnosis as well as the number of people getting tested. We must test wider groups of suspected cases and get results back as soon as possible. The sooner we can identify and isolate those who test positive the better we can control the spread of the virus. Early diagnosis also helps promote effective treatment and survivability.

2) Reduce the risk of contracting the virus in daily life. This includes measures that the government has been promoting such as regular hand washing, eating properly cooked foods with separate utensils, keeping a distance of at least 2 metres between persons and wearing face masks in public.

3) Reduce movement of the population. Measures that limit transport between provinces must be strictly followed to prevent the virus from spreading from one area to another. Measures such as postponing Songkran, locking down provinces and working from home must be maintained until the situation improves.

4) Be disciplined. As we can see, people in countries like China and some in the West have more discipline and respect for the law than many people in Thailand. They have managed to contain the virus until they have no new local infections, only imported cases of those returning from overseas.

Yong said all four measures must be observed strictly before the rainy season, when cases of respiratory disease would rise. “[Then] it will be more difficult to differentiate whether the symptoms of a patient are caused by Covid-19 or other respiratory diseases,” he said.

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