Health officials have ramped up Covid19 testing at Ban Um Piam refugee camp in Tak's Phrop Phra district after a 48-year-old Myanmar man tested positive for the virus there on Saturday.
Oxygen boost: A medical staff member at Golden Jubilee Medical Centre in Nakhon Pathom prepares a patient for hyperbaric exygen treatment. The centre plans to procure more hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers as part of its plan to expand medical services and boost its capacity to accommodate up to 700,000 patients yearly. (Photo by Chanat Katanyu)
This latest Covid-19 case was detected along with that of a 17-yearold female Thai-Burmese student who apparently contracted the virus in Myanmar, says Dr Opas Karnkawinpong, acting director-general at the Department of Disease Control (DDC).
"However, these two new cases do not fit the definition of a second wave of a Covid-19 outbreak."
Dr Opas said officials had already located, tested and quarantined those most at risk from the newly infected couple.
The Ban Um Piam refugee camp has 9,500 refugees and as of yesterday, 950 had been tested.
Dr Opas ruled out a mass outbreak in the camp and outside. "This refugee camp is an enclosed area surrounded by forest and people from outside are banned from entering," he said. "So it is very difficult for people outside to walk in and out and pass on the virus."
He added this was the first recorded infection in a Thai refugee camp and that tests on 99 people who had had close contact with the Myanmar man had all been negative for Covid-19.
Initial laboratory tests also found the infected man only had a low dose of the virus in his system, meaning there was only a slim chance he could have passed it on to others, said the doctor.
The DDC is trying to determine how the refugee was infected but as of yesterday he is suspected of sneaking out of the camp to return to Myanmar before coming back to Thailand.
Nevertheless, Dr Opas did not rule out the possibility that the man might have been infected in Thailand.
The latest two cases have raised fears about controlling the ThaiMyanmar border, which has been closed for months to prevent disease transmission.
The teenage girl is reported to have been infected by her relatives in Myanmar before finding a way to re-enter Thailand, even though the border is closed.
Dr Opas said that none of her close contacts in Thailand had tested positive for the virus.
The girl had a high fever on Nov 16, yet she is thought to have re-entered Thailand some four days later by a van that was sent to pick her up from the border area in Ban Wang Pa, Mae Ramat district.
She was taken to a private hospital in Tak province, and immediately transferred from there to Tak Hospital.
The infected girl, who is half Thai and half Burmese, had since recovered well from the infection and no signs of infection were found in her latest lung X-ray, said the doctor.
So far, officials have tested her mother, other relatives and 10 private hospital staff. Those test results are still pending and the local authority is also trying to track down the van driver who picked her up from the border so he can be tested, too.
