Forty-four Thai provinces where no new cases have been confirmed in the past two weeks could see restrictions lifted as soon as May 1, a health official said Friday.
Without naming those provinces, Tanarak Plipat of the Disease Control Department said they could see restrictions lifted on travel and business operations as part of a staggered reopening of the kingdom based on perceived vulnerability.
“We have now more than 44 provinces that haven’t reported any cases in the last 14 days,” Tanarak told the BBC’s Jonathan Head in an interview streamed online by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand. “Those provinces may start to relax the rules a little bit first.”
He said provinces would be assessed low or high risk, with the latter likely to “be reopened later.” According to his department’s online tracking tool, provinces with no cases reported in the past two weeks include Chiang Rai, Kanchanaburi, Lopburi, Sukhothai and Buriram.
Tanarak noted that nine provinces have “not reported any single case yet.”
As of today, Thailand has reported 2,700 cases and 47 deaths since the outbreak began. As elsewhere, understanding the true scope of the virus’s spread in Thailand is limited by the amount of tests being administered. Recent reports suggest Thailand is only testing in the neighborhood of 2,500 people daily.
Tanarak said cost was a factor and made it clear Thailand is not heading toward mass testing.
“We cannot test everyone, and the cost of testing is very high, about 2,000 baht,” he said. “We want to test enough, but we don’t want to test anybody who may not have the disease.”
He said THB2 million (US$61,000) had been spent on testing to find one case in Phuket.
“We want to test where we can find the cases,” he said.
No goal or target for per capita testing has been established, he added, while the plan remained to “test where we need to be testing.”
One area for expanded testing would be the need to make sure every case of pneumonia and similar illnesses were tested for COVID-19 to identify possible hot spots.
“If we [see] any cluster in any areas, we’re going to expand our testing in those targeted areas,” he said, noting that eight provinces including Phuket have been hardest hit.
Tanarak also said he is under no pressure by the government to temper the truth for the sake of a positive message.
“I haven’t been told personally what I can say or what I cannot,” Tanarak said. “So far there hasn’t been any restriction, for me, to say anything about the situation. They probably know that I would not say anything bad for the time.”
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