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SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand: Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Tuesday (December 22) blamed an increase in coronavirus cases on illegal migration, after the country’s largest outbreak to date. recorded more than 1,000 infections, mainly among Myanmar workers in a shellfish. market close to the capital.
Prayut said he could announce new health regulations this week ahead of the New Year celebrations and attributed the latest outbreak in Samut Sakhon province to networks of people smuggling into Thailand, which has so far had one of the coronavirus cases. lowest in the world.
“This latest outbreak of infections in Samut Sakhon is mainly due to those illegal immigrants and they have brought a lot of pain to the country,” he said in a statement, parts of which he read in a televised speech.
Prayut said he would meet with his COVID-19 task force this week and discuss “additional regulations that may be appropriate for the evolving situation,” without elaborating.
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Health officials reported 427 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday, urging about 1,000 people from a quarter of the country’s provinces who had visited the seafood center this month to report it to authorities.
“But don’t panic. Whoever it is should get tested,” said task force spokesman Taweesin Wisanuyothin.
The new cases include 16 people in eight different provinces, with five of the infections in Bangkok.
CONTAINMENT SUCCESS
Some 397 cases were mostly migrants from Myanmar, a major source of labor in the fishing industry, adding to an outbreak that emerged over the weekend when hundreds of tests among asymptomatic workers came back positive.
More than 1,100 boxes have been traced to the now-closed center, a commercial area where dozens of vendors typically trade shrimp and other seafood for distribution across the country.
Thailand had recorded around 4,300 cases and just 60 deaths as of the weekend, a containment success attributed in large part to its rapid contact tracing and strict entry and quarantine requirements.
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Authorities suspect that some workers may have entered the country illegally as infections soared in neighboring Myanmar, where some 117,000 cases have been recorded.
At least a dozen infected Thai nationals are also known to have returned from Myanmar in the past month without going through immigration or undergoing quarantine.
In Samut Sakhon, an estimated 4,000 people were isolated around the seafood market, and volunteers distributed food to inmates in their rooms.
Varunthorn Mathiprechakul, 22, a shrimp stall owner, said he wanted to control his 26 isolated employees from Myanmar.
“I’m not sure if the government provides enough food for them,” Varunthorn told Reuters.
“I never thought this would happen because Thailand has not had new cases for months,” he said.
“I’m still in shock, I don’t know what to do.”
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