The country registered 23 more Covid-19 fatalities and 2,607 new cases admitted to hospital during the previous 24 hours, the Public Health Ministry announced on Thursday morning, but government data showed an average of more than 20,000 positive antigen tests over the past week.
On Wednesday morning, the government announced 19 coronavirus-related fatalities and 2,886 hospital admissions.
All 2,607 new patients were infected inside Thailand - 15 prison inmates and the remainder in the general population.
At present the health ministry is counting only those patients admitted to hospitals in the daily caseload. But over the past seven days, antigen tests showed a daily average of 20,547 people tested positive for Covid-19.
As of midnight Wednesday, a total of 23,445 people were receiving Covid-19 treatment (up from 23,179 the previous day), including 11,547 in hospitals (up from 11,271). Among the remainder, 675 were in field hospitals/hospitel facilities (down from 839) and 11,196 in home/community isolation (up from 11,042).
Of those in hospital, 854 were seriously ill patients with lung inflammation (up from 851) and 382 dependent on ventilators (down from 394).
The 24-hour period also saw 2,318 patients discharged from hospitals after recovering.
Since the pandemic started in early 2020, there have been 4,568,461 Covid-19 cases, including 2,345,026 this year, with 4,513,943 complete recoveries to date.
The accumulated death toll stood at 31,073 since the beginning of the pandemic, including 9,375 so far this year.
Global Covid-19 cases rose by 971,509 in 24 hours to 571.70 million. The worldwide death toll went up by 2,018 to 6.40 million.
The United States had the most cases at 91.77 million, up 113,588, and the most deaths at 1.05 million, up 367. Thailand ranked 27th by its 4.57 million accumulated Covid-19 cases.
