Kanchanaburi prison builds field hospital for 379 Covid-19 cases

After 379 new Covid-19 infections were found in the Kanchanaburi prison inmate population, work has begun to set up a field hospital. Through active case finding, Kanchanaburi’s governor announced that had uncovered a large cluster within the prison and has taken immediate action to address it.

The governor had warned people in advance on his Facebook page to expect this spike in infections. He explained that they were switching from random spot checks for Covid-19 testing to more proactive methods like active case finding, so they expected to discover cases that previously would have been overlooked. They were implementing this more stringent testing in the provincial prison as well as all major factories.

A field hospital will be constructed inside the prison grounds to care for prisoners who were found to be infected with Covid-19 but are asymptomatic or experiencing only mild symptoms. The main hospital in Kanchanaburi, Phahon Phonphayuhasena, will be staffing the field hospital with doctors and medical workers.

The prison will host the third field hospital in Kanchanaburi, with a large 320-bed facility at Makarak Hospital in Tha Maka, one at a territorial defence training facility in Muang district, and one with 100 beds at the One Tambon One Product centre.

Meanwhile, the Kanchanaburi governor predicted this spike and tells people to expect bigger numbers in the near future for the province. They will be moving infected migrants along the Burmese border to the field hospital in Muang district, and accepting Covid-19 infected patients from provinces in the dark red zone as part of a programme to free up hospital beds for those in need in Covid-19 hubs like Bangkok. These factors will drive Covdi-19 figures up, with the governor expecting as a result daily new infection numbers to rise above 600 – 300 in the provincial prison, and another 300 spread around various factories in the province.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post