Bangkok Metropolitan Administration cancels NY countdown events, asks workers to work from home

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, the municipal organisation in charge of the Greater Bangkok city area, has announced that all New Year countdown events have been cancelled after new cases of Covid-19 were found in Bangkok and surrounding provinces.

But organisations who have already organised events will be able to ask for specific permission.

The BMA is also asking the workers in Bangkok to work from home for the next 14 days. The sentence in the statement from the BMA appears as a “advisory” at this stage.

Several schools in Bangkok have announced closures, for the safety of students. At this stage, they include…
• Wattana Wittayalai
• Assumption Thon Buri
• Bangkok Christian College
• Suan Kularb College
• Thepsirin School

Currently, health authorities are conducting active tracing in construction sites, restaurants and 472 markets around Samut Sakhon and Bangkok after 689 Covid-19 cases emerged over the past 24 hours, mostly linked to migrant workers in the coastal fishing industry and markets in Samut Sakhon, which shares a provincial border with Bangkok.

The Department of Disease Control says they are currently tracking down over 10,000 people who may have come into contact with the infected migrant workers.

Thailand’s Public Health Ministry have now upgraded number of Covid-19 cases in the provincial cluster, mostly Burmese migrant workers, to 689 cases, all identified through contact tracing. Most worked in and around the provinces coastal fishing markets on the Gulf coast, according to the Department of Disease Control.

Some traced cases have been located in Suphan Buri, Nakhon Pathom, Ratchaburi, Bangkok and 3 cases in Samut Prakan (a Lao and 2 Thais). All have so far been traced to the original source of the market. The numbers are expected to rise as the testing, tracing and quarantining process continues. Importantly, the Department of Disease Control claim they have “the situation under control”.

For now, only Samut Sakhon is on a strict “lockdown” with non-essential travel banned in and out of the province plus a nightly curfew imposed until at least January 3. Migrant dormitories and camps have are now on “hard lockdown”. Some of the camps have been secured with barbed wire fences and migrant workers have been instructed not to leave the area.

The DDC say there has been no credible evidence that seafood from the market, or seafood in general, could spread Covid-19 but is urging the public to have their meals hot and not eat them raw.

The Thaiger is updating the information hourly and will advise of any changes to the current situation.

The newly identified cases in the past 24 hours has pushed Thailand’s total number of Covid-19 cases to 5,020, adding nearly 14% additional cases for the country in just one 24 hours period. Previously the highest number of cases in Thailand was 188 new cases announced on March 22.