Bangkok is racing to set up 1,000 more beds in isolation facilities to cope with a spike in Covid-19 cases, City Hall said on Wednesday.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) said all 50 district offices had been directed to set up additional community isolation centres.
The centres would help ease caseloads of infected patients at hospitals, alleviating pressure on the health system as a whole. People who test positive for coronavirus but do not have serious symptoms are treated at the centres.
Bangkok governor Aswin Kwanmuang said the 1,000 additional beds were being added to 13 community isolation centres already up and running in the city.
Pol Gen Aswin was inspecting an isolation centre in Klong Toey district yesterday where 400 of 500 available beds were already occupied.
In total, about 45% of the 3,500 beds currently available in the capital are taken up, he said. Pol Gen Aswin said that no severely infected people were being left untreated in their homes. Bangkok is leading all provinces in the number of new Covid-19 infections. Since Jan 1 when the Omicron variant was first detected, Bangkok has reported 62,954 infections.
According to the latest report by the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) on Wednesday morning, there were 16,426 new cases diagnosed nationwide on Tuesday, 2,891 of them in Bangkok.
There were 27 new fatalities announced for that day, the CCSA said. The 10 districts with the most cases, according to City Hall, are Watthana with 331, Bangkok Noi (6), Prawet (103), Bang Khae (80), Chatuchak (71), Bang Na (68), Suan Luang (67), Don Muang (64), Klong Toey (61) and Phra Khanong (61)
The daily tally of new cases in the capital peaked at 3,233, as reported on Saturday.
Of the 16,462 new coronavirus cases -- the most since August 2021 -- 136 were new arrivals and the bulk were from the general population.
Dr Theera Worathanarat, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Medicine, said via Facebook that Wednesday's CCSA report on caseloads excluded 11,816 people who were confirmed by antigen tests to be infected. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has expressed concern about the surge of Covid-19 infections.