10 new Covid-19 cases detected in quarantine
10 new Covid-19 cases, including a 1 year old girl, were detected in Thailand state quarantine in the past 24 hours. Health officials say most of the cases are Thai nationals returning home. The travellers arrived to Thailand from Indonesia, India, Myanmar and Ethiopia. 8 cases are Thai nationals returning home. The others are an Ethiopian airline cabin crew member and a Burmese office worker.
So far, there have been 3,490 confirmed Covid-19 cases with 3,316 recoveries and 58 deaths. 2,445 of those cases were local transmissions while 552 were imported cases.
Health officials are also busy investigating possible and apparent local transmissions. A Burmese 2 year old boy recently tested positive for Covid-19 in Myanmar’s Myawaddy border town just 9 days after he left Thailand.
Department of Disease Control director general Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoenhai says it’s “impossible” the child contracted the virus in Thailand because health officials had recently tested 2,635 people in the border district Mae Sot and all the tests came back negative. He adds that the district has increased security around the border since Myanmar reported a spike in cases.
Earlier this month, a Bangkok DJ tested positive for Covid-19. It was the first reported local transmission after going a record of 100 days without a reported local transmission. Health officials say the man had a more infectious strain of the virus which has been typically detected in quarantine from those who have returned to Thailand from abroad.
A Uzbek football player from the Buriram United team recently tested positive for Covid-19 after he was released from quarantine. The football player arrived in Thailand on August 11 and went into a mandatory 14 day quarantine in Bangkok where he tested negative for the Covid-19 multiple times. Health officials speculate the virus may have a longer incubation period in rare cases and that he may have “brought the infection with him” from Uzbekistan.
SOURCE: Thai PBS
