Thailand’s official cases surged over the weekend as people have turned to outing their illness on social media rather than wait for the government’s sluggish and incomplete accounting.
As infections outside China for the first time exceed those within, the official tally rose to at least 114 people after this past weekend’s surge of 32 cases.
Those came as skepticism has grown of the official accounting and suspicions of a much wider outbreak have been fed by the emergence of anecdotal reports of infections at schools, entertainment venues and elsewhere. A majority of the new cases have been linked to two outbreak clusters centered around Bangkok’s premier nightlife district and muay thai stadium.
Late last week the public was avidly speculating online about what venues a large group of friends had visited in the Thonglor neighborhood where they took ill about two weeks ago. The Ministry of Health refused to say. Thai health officials have steadfastly refused to detail what locations people who’ve taken ill have visited unlike their counterparts in nations such as Singapore, which have been hailed for their transparency.
Thailand contradicts, flip-flops, sugarcoats COVID-19 as public teeters on pandemic panic
Coincidentally, the hashtag #FoolishLeadersWillKillUsAll was trending during the weekend, at least on reliably dissident Twitter. Today it had been upstaged by #TheLeadersWillDieThePeopleWillSurvive.
The public has stepped in to volunteer this information on its own. International School Bangkok in recent days has published a series of bulletins regarding family members of students who have taken ill and a provincial administrator east of Bangkok in Chachoengsao province with COVID-19 detailed the many public events he has participated in.
His illness has been traced to Lumpini Stadium, a military-owned muay thai arena, where a number of people have taken ill including several high-ranking officers. One of those was celeb Matthew Deane, who on Friday was threatened with prosecution for computer crimes after declaring online that he was ill. Tests soon confirmed he was. At about noon on Monday, his wife Sarunrat “Lydia” Deane announced said she had also taken ill.
Public panic seemed to escalate by the end of the weekend, with many supermarkets packed with shoppers stocking up on essentials Sunday.
Anutin Charnvirakul, the public health minister and public face of the government’s response, said that he would convene a meeting today to decide whether to order all entertainment venues closed.
In the Deep South, health officials are testing some of the 132 people who traveled to Malaysia to attend a recent Muslim gathering attended by nearly 15,000 people from several neighboring nations after many returned home stricken with COVID-19, ISRA News reported.
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Shelves in local super markets in Bangkok are getting emptied. #Covid19 #โควิด19 pic.twitter.com/oCoy15gyYb
— April Cummings (@AprilDCummings) March 15, 2020
