I now know 5 people who have caught Covid that work on, own bars/restaurants or regularly go to Hua Hin Soi 94 - in the past week, mostly admitted over the weekend. This includes one person who received their second dose of Sinopharm around three weeks before they tested positive and were admitted to Hua Hin Hospital. These are all people that are either local Thais or have lived in Hua Hin for years.
Four of these people have been admitted to HH Hospital, to their Covid wards – effectively large converted rooms full of beds with no privacy - and the conditions there are not good – the fifth refuses to go and test despite symptoms and proximity to others who tested positive. No food from outside can be sent in at all, nor anything else. One person did not see a doctor for the first day they were admitted and had to self-administer medication they had fortunately brought themselves (eventually saw one by Zoom). They have told me that the numbers increased from around 30 people in their Covid room to now over 100 so it is very crowded. A curtain splits the men and women’s sections, and there are kids in the women’s sections so you can imagine that noise is an issue.
It massively disincentivises people to be tested when they are effectively imprisoned on one of these wards if found positive. Food looks dreadful and there is no option to buy any more. They have said that there are not even any cleaning staff working in the ‘ward’. I tried to help one person out but you cannot pay for them to go to any other facility or room, because its under the emergency law. Spending weeks stuck in a noisy room full of sick people, with bad food, no real exercise area (small outside area) with lights on all day (turned off at midnight) and no option to get out till you consistently test negative, is not conducive to healing or mental health. The government has to reassess this nonsense, until they do the real numbers will remain a mystery as people avoid testing and the problem will only get worse.
