THAILAND again saw its single-day tally of coronavirus cases climb to 11,784 with 81 additional deaths this morning (July 19) while a Chulalongkorn Hospital doctor warned that the lockdown this time might not improve the situation like it happened last year, Sanook.com said.
The cumulative confirmed total since the start of the pandemic has reached 415,170 and in the current wave that began in April 386,307.
The additional 81 fatalities, down from 101 yesterday, raised the death toll to 3,422 while 5,741 more patients have recovered.
Of today’s 11,784 cases, up from yesterday’s total of 11,397, altogether 11,684 were found among the general public and 100 in prisons and detention centres.
Meanwhile Dr. Teerawat Hemajutha, head of the Emerging Disease Health Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn Hospital, said in a Facebook post today that the very high number of infected people means the current lockdown might not improve the situation like it did last year.
Even so he hopes and prays for things to get better.
Dr. Teerawat pointed out that in a lockdown people are kept at home and only go out to buy food when necessary. The lack of social distance within the home leads to people who are asymptomatic spreading the virus to other family members. If all of them get infected but remain asymptomatic, when the lockdown ends they will spread the infection publicly.
Last year’s lockdown worked because the number of infected people was low compared to record-breaking totals this year with infection spreading in slums, prisons and also being passed on by people walking up and down the street.
For a lockdown to work everyone must be tested first because otherwise bubbles of infection are being created with those infected spreading the disease to other family members and within their community. As they remain sealed, everyone gets infected and they are later all released to the public.
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Top: Padlock and keys on white background with coronavirus lockdown text. Photo: Jernej Furman (CC BY 2.0)
Insert: Map showing accumulation of Covid-19 cases by province released by the Public Relations Department yesterday (July 18) and published by Wikipedia.
Home Page: Dr. Teerawat says this year’s lockdown is unlikely to work. Photo: Sanook.com
