News Forum - Health officials say Thailand’s Covid cases could reach 100,000 a day by Songkran

[Thaiger]

Thailand’s daily Covid-19 infections could reach 100,000 by the Songkran holiday next month. That’s the worst-case scenario prediction from the Department of Disease Control, according to a Bangkok Post report today. The DDC says everything hinges on how strictly disease prevention measures are adhered to. These include avoiding group activities, working from home, avoiding non-essential travel, and maintaining high vaccination rates. Health officials say the most optimistic prediction is one where measures are fully implemented and adhered to, causing daily cases to level off and hover at the 20,000 a day mark from mid-March. Less optimistic is a scenario in […]

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[palooka]

If they counted properly they are more than likely doing that number daily now.

Elderly (70-80 yrs) covid infected now quarantined in own homes locally, no beds anywhere.

Have a few re infections also.

[Stonker]

Cases have never been that reliable an indicator, particularly with Omicron, but serious cases, numbers on ventilators, and deaths are both easier to check and a more reliable indicator.

Apart from a 'blip' at the end of January, deaths were pretty steady during January but have been climbing steadily all this month at a consistently steeper / faster rate than cases with no sign at all of any peak or drop.

There simply hasn't been enough time yet to get enough people fully / properly vaccinated with a booster and that's not going to happen for at least a couple of months.

By then the new GSK / Sanofi vax / booster may have finished testing and approval and be coming on-line, with all indicators looking as if it's considerably more effective (9 -30+ times) than even the mRNA vaccines.

Things are looking up, just as long as people and countries can be patient and not give up too soon.

[Fanta]

100,000 a day! I wonder if an ex TAT employee had anything to do with calculating this number? 

[Soidog]

What they mean is positive PCR tests could teach 100,000. Actual cases have most likely already at or close to that level today.

What ever happened to the decision to stop reporting daily case numbers? I guess it went the same way as the instruction for police to stop ridiculous crime scene compromising re-enactments!  

[Stonker]

36 minutes ago, palooka said:

If they counted properly they are more than likely doing that number daily now.

Elderly (70-80 yrs) covid infected now quarantined in own homes locally, no beds anywhere.

Have a few re infections also.

Agreed - locally it's becoming more crowded but not an issue yet.

What's worrying around here is the recent cold spell and some cases of pneumonia (including me) - back to wooly pyjamas!

[Stonker]

23 minutes ago, Fanta said:

100,000 a day! I wonder if an ex TAT employee had anything to do with calculating this number? 

That's the worst case scenario, with the best case being 20,000 and most likely somewhere in-between - what on earth is wrong with that?

[oldschooler]

52 minutes ago, Stonker said:

Cases have never been that reliable an indicator, particularly with Omicron, but serious cases, numbers on ventilators, and deaths are both easier to check and a more reliable indicator.

Apart from a 'blip' at the end of January, deaths were pretty steady during January but have been climbing steadily all this month at a consistently steeper / faster rate than cases with no sign at all of any peak or drop.

There simply hasn't been enough time yet to get enough people fully / properly vaccinated with a booster and that's not going to happen for at least a couple of months.

By then the new GSK / Sanofi vax / booster may have finished testing and approval and be coming on-line, with all indicators looking as if it's considerably more effective (9 -30+ times) than even the mRNA vaccines.

Things are looking up, just as long as people and countries can be patient and not give up too soon.

Your opening paragraph sums it all up perfectly

[Manu]

30 minutes ago, Soidog said:

What they mean is positive PCR tests could teach 100,000. Actual cases have most likely already at or close to that level today.

Well of course, way over that in fact. The last few weeks where I am, so many of us had symptoms and for the vast majority when it happens, we do an ATK test and if positive, we stay home so this is never recorded in the official figures (that's myself included by the way). I know many also who had a sniff but did not bother. I do not know one single person who ended up in hospital. Considering most people do not get any symptom (well they are positive for sars-cov-2 but really do not have covid), I can imagine pratically everyone around our small community met that virus at some point or another the last few weeks. Let's imagine how many "cases" this would be if we were to test the entire population? For example in France, they had 10 million people tested positive in January alone, mostly because they were testing kids 3 times a week. And what good this mass testing did really apart from wasting 1.6 billion euros? There is no restriction nor any mask that can stop what is already happening, the spead of Omicron, as it has clearly happened in Europe for example, so the rational logic would perhaps be to change drastically the approach, vaccinate the most vulnerable, stop all restrictions and let's talk about something else...as it is NOW the case in many countries (what we should have done ages ago in my opinion but never mind the past now).

Of the last few weeks and the so many people who got covid included myself wher I am, i know only one person who went to hospital, that's my friend's 8 years old kid. He had a bit of a sniff and cough for a couple of days, my friend being at risk himself decided to test his kid in hospital, being positive, he had to spend 10 days there on the mainland although he was completely fine after 2 days. And then, they sent him back to the island...to the local hospital for another 4 days, a completely healthy kid and there was my friend moaning all day long cause he was not allowed to visit him, not even send him food in case the containers were infected (??). Surely 2 years down the line, this non-sense needs to change.

[Stonker]

53 minutes ago, Soidog said:

What they mean is positive PCR tests could teach 100,000. Actual cases have most likely already at or close to that level today.

Of course that's what they mean - that's what pretty well every country in the world means by positive cases.

It would be way beyond absurd for Thailand to adopt a different system to everyone else now, or to change the system after two years as there'd be nothing to compare it to so it'd be completely meaningless ... and of course actual cases are higher just as they've always been here and everywhere else.

Deaths and hospital cases are still the best indicator, just as they are anywhere else, and in Thailand they're still climbing at broadly similar levels although deaths have been higher for two or three weeks.

53 minutes ago, Soidog said:

What ever happened to the decision to stop reporting daily case numbers? 

There was no such "decision". It was a proposal that never happened and instead deaths and hospitalisations were more widely reported, which makes far more sense.

To have stopped reporting cases would have raised massive warning flags here and led to totally unnecessary fear that case numbers were being deliberately hidden, which would have achieved nothing apart from destroying any remaining trust that anyone had in not just the government but the hospitals and medical authorities who are well regarded as having done a good job. 

It would have been an absolutely crazy move, and instead the emphasis has been switched to hospital and serious cases and deaths, just as it should have been.

1 hour ago, Soidog said:

I guess it went the same way as the instruction for police to stop ridiculous crime scene compromising re-enactments!

There was never any such "instruction". Any comment would be superfluous.

[Stonker]

8 minutes ago, Manu said:

. And what good this mass testing did really apart from wasting 1.6 billion euros?

Agreed with you 100% on that, @Manu - but in the UK it was closer to 50 billion than 1.6 billion.

As every UK cross party committee said, money totally wasted that achieved nothing.

12 minutes ago, Manu said:

...my friend being at risk himself decided to test his kid in hospital, being positive, he had to spend 10 days there on the mainland although he was completely fine after 2 days. And then, they sent him back to the island...to the local hospital for another 4 days, a completely healthy kid and there was my friend moaning all day long cause he was not allowed to visit him, not even send him food in case the containers were infected (??).

As your friend was "at risk" and his son tested positive and had moderate symptoms the only sensible thing to do was to quarantine his son as he wasn't "completely healthy" but was infected and infectious.  

Your friend may not have been happy about not seeing him for a fortnight and not being able to send him food, but I'm sure he'd have been a lot less happy if there had been no quarantine available for his son or if, as he was "at risk" himself, he'd caught Covid from a contaminated pinto from the hospital and ended up on a ventilator or dead.

26 minutes ago, Manu said:

Surely 2 years down the line, this non-sense needs to change

It has changed, dramatically.  Compare what happens now if you test positive with what happened six months or a year ago.

[Manu]

12 minutes ago, Stonker said:

Agreed with you 100% on that, @Manu - but in the UK it was closer to 50 billion than 1.6 billion.

As every UK cross party committee said, money totally wasted that achieved nothing.

1.6 billions was for January alone.

By at risk, I meant he is 73. Life is a constant risk. He is triple-vaccinated so aparently he should never end up on ventilor or dead. Either that or the vaccines are not working. Not to mention that if his kid had no symptom, he would have not known any better, and also he was around his kid with symptoms a day and half before sending him to hospital. Finally he is part of the community so he has been around many of us with covid, including myself the day before I had some symptoms. This was his conclusion of all this: he should have never sent his kid to hospital, and analyse the situation by himself instead of panicking cause there was no need.

[Cabra]

Just keep the day death toll to under 200, and hopefully by 1 May this too shall pass.

[Stonker]

2 minutes ago, Manu said:

1.6 billions was for January alone.

Aah ...

2 minutes ago, Manu said:

By at risk, I meant he is 73. Life is a constant risk. He is triple-vaccinated so aparently he should never end up on ventilor or dead. Either that or the vaccines are not working. Not to mention that if his kid had no symptom, he would have not known any better, and also he was around his kid with symptoms a day and half before sending him to hospital. Finally he is part of the community so he has been around many of us with covid, including myself the day before I had some symptoms. This was his conclusion of all this: he should have never sent his kid to hospital, and analyse the situation by himself instead of panicking cause there was no need.

Well, even triple vax'd is no guarantee and I very much doubt he was triple vax'd with 3 x mRNA given the time scale so an mRNA booster after 2 x 'something else' is most likely and far less effective.

It's easy to say he should have done nothing as it all turned out OK, but that's why these decisions aren't solely his to make, like wearing a seat belt.  If he'd ended up in hospital and on a ventilator that would have cost everyone else a lot more than his son being quarantined for a fortnight.

[Soidog]

2 hours ago, Stonker said:

There was never any such "instruction". Any comment would be superfluous.

Nonsense. Prayut himself “Instructed” police to stop them

[Stonker]

10 minutes ago, Soidog said:

Nonsense. Prayut himself “Instructed” police to stop them

Really?

I think you may be taking us off topic, but I always thought that following Koh Tao what he ordered stopped were any re-enactments or parading of suspects before they'd been charged and pled guilty, NOT the customary crime scene re-enactments after a guilty plea which are still the norm.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/advanced/1080381/police-media-shows-wiretapping-ban-proposed

Maybe you could give a link to show that he ordered those stopped as well, as all the reports on this in the media must have got it wrong.