Amid rising alarm over hundreds of new coronavirus transmissions in recent days, mostly among migrant seafood industry laborers at a fresh market southwest of Bangkok, health officials said today they found another 39 related cases spread through 17 provinces.
Cases have now been found in at least 23 provinces plus the capital, from Songkhla to Chiang Mai and Tak to Nakhon Ratchasima.
In Bangkok, 11 people have now been found to have become infected, including another 28 infections found in provinces. Taweesilp Wissanuyothin of the Disease Control Department did not go into further detail this morning about the 11 Bangkok cases. Seven other cases were also detected in state quarantine.
Taweesilp did not announce any more infections among the migrant worker population at Mahachai in Samut Sakhon province, which was ground zero for the outbreak. More than 1,200 infections have been found there since Friday, with 397 cases announced just yesterday.
Taweesilp said more test results of people in the vicinity would be announced later.
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At today’s news conference, Taweesilp urged the public against xenophobia.
“Please do not forget that migrant workers help drive our country’s economy, whether they are legal or not,” he said.
Mahachai is home to a large population of workers from Myanmar, where an outbreak has been raging since August.
The death toll today remained at 60 – no more deaths have been attributed to the virus since early November;
Since January, Thailand has reported 5,762 infections and 60 fatalities, with 4,095 patients discharged from hospitals.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha in a televised speech Tuesday evening asked for the public’s cooperation with public health measures, pointing blame at undocumented workers and their traffickers. He told people to “keep a strict guard up” but fell short of announcing any solid new measures such as a curfew or lockdown during the year-end holidays.
In lieu of a national response, provincial authorities have been canceling New Year’s Eve events throughout the realm, with some, including Bangkok and Pathum Thani, calling for voluntary suspension of activities such as concerts, boxing matches and cockfights.
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