Thailand, one of the countries that had best curbed the coronavirus in the world, has started testing thousands of people to stem the largest increase in infections that the country has had since the beginning of the pandemic.
A lockdown was announced on the evening of Saturday 19 December in the province of Samut Sakhon, which borders the capital Bangkok to the southwest and has about 500,000 inhabitants. The lockdown, which will last until January 3, was decided following the discovery of an outbreak linked to the central fish market in the city of Samut Sakhon, the capital of the province of the same name. There will be a curfew from 10 pm to 5 am and people will not be able to move outside the province: for safety, the events scheduled for the New Year celebrations have also been canceled in Bangkok.
Infections were almost all recorded among migrant workers in the market, for the most part coming from neighboring Myanmar, where the epidemic has not been kept under control (over 115 thousand infections), unlike what has been done so far in Thailand. On Saturday, 548 people tested positive for the coronavirus, the highest number ever in the country, out of 1,192 tested. The percentage of positives and swabs is very high (around 43 percent) and the authorities are planning to test around 40,000 people, focusing mainly on the thousands of migrant workers in the market.
Less than 4,300 cases had been recorded in Thailand prior to Saturday since the outbreak began and still 60 people have died from COVID-19. The country had managed to keep cases under control thanks to a severe and timely closure of the borders and life had returned to quite normal, albeit with great economic damage to tourism industry. Anyone who enters Thailand is required to undergo a 14-day quarantine and multiple swabs, but many people arrive illegally every day from the more than 2,400-kilometer border with Myanmar, who are not registered.
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