ICUs in Chiang Mai nearly full amidst Covid-19 surge

In Chiang Mai, surging Covid-19 infections have filled ICUs and plunged the province into crisis, just days before international reopening. Doctors are warning that the province is near critical levels as it has just two hospitals that are capable of treating severe Covid-19 patients and they are reporting that their intensive care units are nearly at full capacity.

Daily infections have averaged 380 per day in the last week, and the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Chiang Mai University has warned that new clusters are being uncovered every day. The doctor said that 5% of new infections are severe cases needing ICU facilities, but that amounts to 19 per day, and it is fast filling up ICU beds in Chiang Mai.

Another 15% of new Covid-19 patients in the province are considered to have moderate symptoms. With more than 6,000 Covid-19 cases, the 2 hospitals in the province, Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai and Nakornping, are short on ICU beds and struggling to keep up with surging infection numbers.

The Chiang Mai provincial administration is rapidly preparing community and home isolation programmes to which they will move mild and even moderate Covid-19 infections. The spiking numbers moved Chiang Mai to the province with the 8th most infections yesterday in all of Thailand and 33rd most infected since the beginning of the third wave of the pandemic beginning in April.

Chiang Mai University’s Dean of the Faculty of Medicine stressed that vaccination needs to continue to keep the province safe and called for anyone who has yet to receive 2 doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to immediately come forward and get vaccinated.

SOURCE: Thai PBS World