DESPITE Covid count remaining high these days reaching 13,655 cases and 87 deaths this morning (July 22) , people are still helping each other with a kind taxi driver last night taking a sick homeless man to the hospital after he had been lying on the pavement since morning, CH3ThailandNews and Sanook.com said.
In its early morning briefing the Public Health Ministry said of the 13,655 new cases, 13,110 were among the general public and 545 in prisons and detention centres.
The cumulative confirmed total since the start of the pandemic has reached 453,132 and since April this year 424,269.
The additional 87 fatalities raised the death toll to 3,697 while 7,921 more patients were cured.
Meanwhile at 8 p.m. last night Huai Khwang police station officers unsuccessfully tried to coordinate with relevant agencies to help take a homeless 35 to 40 years old man who was lying on the sidewalk in front of a rice porridge shop unable to move or talk only blink his eyes. He was bare feet but wearing a face mask and had an empty lunch box and bottle of water with him.
However at 9.21 p.m. a taxi driver, later identified as Mr. Kaona Khamphak, 34, and who is also a volunteer at RuamKatanyu Foundation, drove by and volunteered to help.
By then an Erawan paramedics team had come to the scene and tried to coordinate and get this ailing homeless man admitted to a hospital but failed to find room for him anywhere.
The two Huay Kwang policemen then signed a paper permitting the cabbie to take the man to Police Hospital.
The Erawan team gave him a PPE suit, two face masks and a long apron to wear. They also installed a plastic shield between the front and rear seats and then wrapped the still breathing man in plastic and placed him at the rear and he was rushed to hospital for treatment.
Kaona said he stepped in to help because he did not want to see anymore people dying by the roadside with their bodies not collected for hours as happened yesterday with three of them.
Food vendors in the area said this homeless man had not come round to ask for food for three days and nights. Yesterday morning he was found lying at a parking lot in Soi Pracha Songkhro 41 and someone moved him to the front of the rice porridge shop where he lay all day before being helped after 9 p.m..
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Top: Huay Kwang Market. Photo: Keng Susumpow (CC BY 2.0)
Home Page : The cab that took the ailing homeless to hospital last night. Thai headline says, “Don’t want to see anymore people die.” Photo: Sanook.com
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