Health authorities on Monday said 22 more Covid-19 fatalities and 5,406 new transmissions around Thailand occurred on Sunday, bringing the accumulated toll to 1,934 deaths and the number of cases since the start of the pandemic to 249,853.
The number of new cases in a 24-hour period was the third highest ever recorded.
The Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) said 5,397 of the new infections were in the general population and only nine in prisons.
CCSA spokesman Taweesilp Visanuyothin, the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) spokesman, said growing congestion in hospitals was a major concern.
"The morning meeting discussed how to reduce the number of patients in hospitals," he said, "because there is a rising trend of patients with serious conditions."
Hospitals and field hospitals are currently treating 45,648 coronavirus patients, 1,806 of them seriously ill.
Doctors and Deputy Public Health Minister Satit Pitutacha have warned of insufficient beds to treat new patients due to the severity of the virus outbreak.
Bangkok logged 10 fatalities, while Samut Prakan recorded three. Nakhon Ratchasima, Phetchaburi, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Rayong, Pathum Thani, Roi Et, Chaiyaphum, Songkhla, Surat Thani found one each.
Victims died an average of just 7.5 days after testing positive for the virus, according to the CCSA.
The country reported 18 imported cases, including six Thai returnees from Cambodia. The others were three Thais returning from Russia, two each from Sudan and France, and a single Thai national from each of Somalia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The only foreigner was a Cameroonian.
While Sunday's death toll was just over half that of Saturday's, the number of new cases was the third-highest ever recorded in Thailand, following 9,635 on May 17 and 5,485 on May 31.
Cases in Thailand are now rising faster than in every European country except the United Kingdom, and at about the same rate as the United States, although the novel coronavirus is spreading more quickly in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. While daily new cases are falling rapidly in India, they are still exponentially higher than in other Asian countries.
