Thailand News Today | Record daily infections, Covid restrictions, British arrivals ‘on hold’ | Jan 4

745 new Covid-19 infections and 1 new coronavirus related death have been reported today during the daily briefing of the CCSA. Thailand now has 4,022 active Covid-19 cases with a total of 8,439 reported cases and 65 deaths since the beginning of the outbreak a year ago.

Today’s figures include 505 cases in Samut Sakhon which were announced yesterday. Some of the cases are waiting for a second round of tests.

The 745 new cases is the largest daily total of new infections ever announced in Thailand.

Restrictions are now in place, as of midnight last night, as the latest mitigations against Thailand’s Covid-19 outbreak.

The new restrictions are applied to 28 red zone provinces, including Bangkok.

The full list of the 28 provinces are at thethaiger.com

We’ve also got a full video about the restrictions, that’s underneath in our descriptions.

In addition to the restrictions already published, the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority have upgraded their restrictions on dining at restaurants. Apart from banning alcohol at restaurants and insisting on social distancing, they’ve now announced that restaurants must close by 7pm at night. That goes in effect from tomorrow.

Amongst the latest restrictions, travel between provinces could include additional screening, without listing exactly what this will be, particularly from red zone provinces. Some north east provinces have already announced that, if you travel from a red zone, like Bangkok, you’ll be required to self-quarantine for 14 days when you arrive.

Our Thaiger perspective is that these screenings will roll out fairly spontaneously, and if you are travelling between provinces, be ready for additional questions and screening points.

In another proposal being considered, Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health will request the CCSA to defer the entry of British visitors to the country after evidence of the faster-spreading B117 strain (aka. the “G strain”) of Covid-19 was found in 4 British travellers arriving in Thailand on December 21.

Over 30 countries have reported cases of the highly-transmissible UK variant of the novel coronavirus, raising fears of increased global spread, even as countries begin to unroll vaccination programs. They’ve also detected cases of the B117 variant in Singapore, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Department of Disease Control announced that all passengers who were on board the same flight as the 4, or anyone who had come into contact with them, have now been located, tested and found to be clear of infection.

In the midst of a new wave of Covid-19 infections, Thailand will get 2 million vaccine doses from China’s Sinovac Biotech. The first batch of 200,000 doses will arrive next month, according to the Public Health Ministry. Another 800,000 doses will arrive in March and the last order of 1 million doses will arrive in April.

Since the outbreak last month at a Samut Sakhon seafood market, Thailand health officials have been racing to curb the spread of the virus.

The Thai company Siam Bioscience is in the process of producing the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine which was developed in partnership with Oxford University. That vaccine is planned to be available to the public in May. The Thai government has set a goal to vaccinate half of the population, around 33 million people, by the end of this year.