BANGKOK (AP) – After operating against barriers to prevent coronavirus for most of the year, Thailand has suddenly had an extended outbreak among migrant workers at the doorsteps of the capital Bangkok.
The rise in cases in Samut Sakhon province threatens to end the virus in Thailand’s disease economy and undo efforts in a matter of months.
In an effort to slow the spread of the virus by isolating infected patients, Prime Minister Priyuth Chan-ocha has ordered the army and navy to help set up a 1,000-bed area hospital in the province, Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Kongchip Tantravinit said Wednesday. It will be located as close as possible where most patients already have to be transported to another location to reduce the risks of transmission, he said.
The outbreak has already been reported in more than a dozen other provinces, including Bangkok. Capital officials have ordered that current safety measures such as social distance, wearing masks and checking fences, be more strictly observed in markets, temples, parks and entertainment venues. The city’s more than 700 state schools and nurseries have been ordered closed for 12 days from Thursday.
Suspected cases for investigation as well as pesticide areas have been found in contact tracing. At a mall in the popular Siam Square shopping area of central Bangkok, a Thai woman tested positive for coronavirus at three shops she visited, as there was a food court at the nearby MBK Mall.
A new wave of coronavirus cases abroad already means Thailand’s economic turnaround will slow as it takes longer for the global economy to recover, Priyuth said in a televised speech on Tuesday evening.
“What we’ve seen now is that being too relaxed about cowardly precautionary measures can lead to economic hardship.”
Prayath said the situation means Thailand will have to tread carefully as it relaxes rules for admitting visitors from other countries – an approach that could hamper efforts to revive the country’s lucrative tourism industry, which trades regular passenger flights from abroad in early April. So Thailand dried up after the closure. .
Shortly before the recent outbreak last week, a new expanded list of countries whose tourists would be allowed under tight restrictions was released, and the idea of shortening the mandatory 14-day arrival time was under discussion.
A total of 657 new cases of coronavirus were reported in Thailand on Sunday – the country’s largest daily spike. For months, almost all of the cases discovered were already in quarantine after arriving from abroad.
More cases since Sunday have pushed Thailand’s total to 5,762. Virtually all of the migrants in Samut Sakhon worked or joined the province’s largest seafood market. Health officials said far 44% of migrant workers and people with direct links to the market who have been tested so far have been infected, although most do not show symptoms.
The seafood market was sealed off over the weekend, and other local restrictions were imposed, including a night curfew, a ban on travel outside the province, and the closure of many public places. Late Tuesday night, lockdown measures were also imposed in two neighboring provinces, including a ban on New Year’s celebrations. Plans for a public celebration were also canceled in the coastal resort city of Pattaya.
As many as 23 provinces – about a third of the total – were declared by the COVID-19 Situation Administration Center on Wednesday – with vendors declared to be at high risk based on who their main customers were.
Despite the spread of seafood-related cases across the country, Prayut expressed confidence that Thailand “could become one of the least affected countries in the world with this deadly disease.”
The head of the World Health Organization, Dr. In a September tweet, Tedros Adhanam brebreasis praised Thailand’s handling of its coronavirus crisis several times, “full community and government response, comprehensive testing, contact tracing, community engagement and nationwide mobilization.” Community #HealthWorkers. “
Priyuth’s declaration of a state of emergency in March also prompted his government to implement measures ranging from lockdown and censorship to the fight against the virus, to making masks mandatory and banning the sale of alcohol.
Supan Mongkolsutri, president of the Federation Thai F Thai Industries, said the new outbreak was causing a loss of about 1 billion baht (.133.1 million) per day to the industrial sector of Samut Sakhon.
Supan said the federation opposes lockdown measures in other areas, as the problem was local and the government could include it.
Charoin Pokfund Foods, both a major seafood producer operating in the Thai Union Group and Samut Sakhon, said they expect little or no disruption to their supply chains.
The origins of the recent outbreak are not yet clear, but in virtually all new cases transformation workers from neighboring Myanmar are employed in the seafood industry.
Low-wage migrant labor, from factories to fishing and construction, powers many of Thailand’s economies. According to the Thai Ministry of Labor, in addition to the 233,000 documented migrant workers in Samut Sakhon, an unknown number are working illegally. Thailand has about 4 million to 5 million foreign workers, according to the UN-affiliated international organization Migration.
Despite efforts to regularize their conditions, many foreign workers are trafficked to Thailand by human traffickers and then forced to work in close slavery for small businesses, according to a 2015 investigation by the Associated Press. When he noticed hundreds of shrimp bark shades hidden from plain sight on the residential streets or in the mass sakhons behind the walls.
People of Myanmar descent have already pointed the finger at the current outbreak, as the coronavirus outbreak, which began in August in the western state of Myanmar, spread to the commercial capital, Yangon, and then from the east to the Thai border.
Thai authorities tried to limit border traffic, but the border is notoriously porous. In early December, cases arising in Myanmar were found in northern Thailand. They were Thais who returned from a stay in Myanmar and evaded border control which would have forced them to secede. At least two flew south towards Bangkok before they could be found.
Yet part of popular opinion blames migrant workers who have fled to Thailand on charges of new outbreaks.
“This latest outbreak of infection in Samut Sakho is mainly due to such illegal immigrants,” Prime Minister Prayath said on Tuesday without giving evidence. On Wednesday, he ordered the military to step up patrolling to find illegal border crossings and demanded an investigation into corrupt officials who could help the criminal network engaged in human slavery.
Activists for migrant workers configure the situation differently and point out that there has also been a large spread among migrant workers in two Southeast Asian countries, Singapore and Malaysia.
“Migrant workers in Asia are at high risk of contracting and spreading the Covid-1 contract due to their inability to practice social distance in both their labor-friendly workplaces and their overcrowded and often insane living quarters,” said Andy H. Lay, a migrant. Rights expert working in Asia.
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