Bangkok's overflow of Covid-19 cases is being sent to the neighbouring provinces of Samut Prakan and Samut Sakhon for treatment, it was revealed yesterday.
Samut Prakan and Bang Phli hospitals in Samut Prakan have converted two dormitories and an auditorium at Dhonburi Rajabhat University's Samut Prakan campus into field hospitals, with 920 beds available, according to Kiattiphum Wongrajit, the Public Health Ministry's permanent secretary.
About 400 Covid-19 patients were already receiving treatment at those field hospitals, said Dr Kiattiphum, all of them either asymptomatic or suffering only mild symptoms.
Some who had been sicker but were now in a stable condition had been transferred there from Samut Prakan Hospital, from Bangkok and other nearby provinces, said Dr Kiattiphum.
He said the field hospitals were thus helping the authorities increase their control over the outbreak but mass testing needed to continue in vulnerable places like fresh markets, factories and schools.
Health inspector-general Narong Apikulwanit said cooperation between public and private hospitals in Samut Prakan had so far ensured there were enough hospital beds for Covid-19 patients with serious symptoms, including those from other provinces within the greater Bangkok area.
Dr Narong said provincial authorities in Samut Prakan had tested 47,059 people and found 118 cases, mostly linked to fresh markets, factories and schools. They had also detected 544 infections after testing 31,621 people in hospitals, 85 in quarantine and 95 at airports.
He said private hospitals had helped to provide beds to expand the state's capacity to treat patients with severe symptoms both in Bangkok and Samut Prakan, which yesterday reported 110 new cases.
Samut Prakan has so far this month reported 1,176 new Covid-19 cases -- 744 have been hospitalised, of whom 67 had lung inflammation with seven on ventilators.
Taweesilp Visanuyothin, spokesman for the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA), said that Samut Sakhon, the epicentre of the second outbreak late last year, was also receiving Covid-19 cases from Bangkok and would reopen its field hospitals for this purpose.
Dr Taweesilp said 201 Covid patients were still waiting to be given hospital beds as of Monday.