Hundreds at risk as rules ignored

Hundreds at risk as rules ignored

Officials in protective gear spray disinfectant on the luggage of passengers who arrived on Sunday at Suvarnabhumi airport from India. Flight AI334 carried 40 Thai returnees and 68 foreign nationals. Two monks had a fever and were isolated for testing. The rest were sent for 14-day quarantine. WICHAN CHAROENKIATPAKUL
Officials in protective gear spray disinfectant on the luggage of passengers who arrived on Sunday at Suvarnabhumi airport from India. Flight AI334 carried 40 Thai returnees and 68 foreign nationals. Two monks had a fever and were isolated for testing. The rest were sent for 14-day quarantine. WICHAN CHAROENKIATPAKUL

Hundreds of people are at risk of contracting Covid-19 after coming in close contact with a man who tested positive for the disease, according to the Department of Disease Control.

The man, an inmate, was Thailand's first locally transmitted case after over 100 days. He was identified as a DJ who later tested positive after being placed under quarantine in prison.

Department officials are in the process of screening 970 people who came in contact with the 37-year-old inmate and found some of them shared drinking glasses and ignored social distancing measures at dining venues where the man was present before he was sent to jail.

Some of these venues did not check the temperatures of visitors and failed to ask them to use Thai Chana's check-in feature.

The department on Sunday reported that among the 970 people, 119 were deemed at high risk while 851 were deemed at low risk.

However, after testing 516 people, results for 513 of them came back negative, while the rest are still pending.

The inmate tested positive for Covid-19 after being sent to jail on Aug 26 over a drug offence. He worked as a DJ at two branches of the Sam Wan Song Khuen pub, one in Bangkok and the other in Nonthaburi. He also visited the Bangkok venue on Aug 18, before he was jailed.

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