Covid situation improves, low infection rate in outbound travellers

The local Covid-19 situation is improving and the infection rate among outbound travellers is only about 4%, with vaccination stations for foreign tourists now open in 31 provinces, according to the Public Health Ministry.

Dr Opas Karnkawinpong, permanent secretary for public health, said on Monday that the  Covid-19 situation in Thailand continued to improve. In the fourth week of this year (from Jan 22 to 28) there were 472 Covid-19 inpatients (67 per day) and 29 fatalities (four per day).

During the previous week there were 627 inpatients (90 per day) and 44 fatalities (six per day).

"All the new fatalities were vulnerable people, most of them were never vaccinated or received only one shot," Dr Opas said.

Health officials remained prepared to handle the increasing number of arrivals. Workers in the service sector were undergoing antigen tests weekly.

From Jan 8 to 21, 828 outbound travellers took RT-PCR tests and 33 of them, 3.99%, tested positive for Covid-19 - 12 Chinese, nine Thais and 12 of other nationalities.

Dr Opas said the BA.2.75 subvariant of the Omicron variant was the dominant strain in the country, accounting for 90% of newly tested cases.

He also said there were now 128 Covid-19 vaccination centres for foreign tourists in 31 provinces. The Health Ministry had not authorised any vaccination centre in the private sector for the purpose yet.