Loong Boon Mee

28 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

After a one day pause, the COVID pandemic in Thailand rebounded with resounding force on Wednesday as the country reported a new record high 16,533 new cases and set its second highest daily deaths total with 133. It was the country’s fifth daily record high in cases among the past seven days.

 

Wednesday’s 16,533 new cases marked a 2,383 case increase from the 14,150 one-day dip in cases reported Tuesday, as daily cases in Thailand have rocketed upward from the 10,000 range in mid-July. Wednesday’s 133 new deaths was surpassed only by the 141 fatalities reported on July 17.

 

Wednesday’s new case count included 16,331 among the general public and 202 from Thailand’s prisons. Thailand has now totaled 543,361 COVID cases and 4,397 COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic in January 2020, though most of those have occurred just since this April.

 

Wednesday’s large increase in cases suggests the government may have finally included in the national tally some or all of the more than 3,000 COVID cases found over the weekend at a Saha Farms chicken processing plant in Phetchabun province. But that won’t be confirmed one way or the other until later in the day.

 

Now in the worst of a so-called third wave that began in April, Thailand’s COVID outbreak has spread lately from its original center in Bangkok and several adjoining provinces to the entire nation. All or almost all of Thailand’s 77 provinces lately have been reporting new COVID cases on a daily basis.

 

Health experts said the rising COVID case and death tolls in Thailand have been driven by the highly contagious Delta (India) variant of the coronavirus that’s now become dominant in the country. Its toll has been worsened by Thailand’s lagging COVID vaccination program that has only fully vaccinated about 5 percent of the population after months of effort, partly due to limited supplies of government procured vaccines.

 

The country’s health care system has been brought to the breaking point by the worsening pandemic. Thailand on Wednesday again reported a new record high for active COVID cases hospitalized (178,270), as well as new record highs for critical patients (4,325) and the share of those on ventilators (995).

 

Total COVID hospitalizations have almost doubled in the past two-plus weeks, and the share of those in critical condition has almost doubled in the past month. Prior to a single day decline on Tuesday, Thailand's tally of critical condition COVID patients had risen to new daily records for the past 37 days in a row.

 

In other developments:

--More signs emerged of a Thai public health system being overrun by the current COVID pandemic with few to no available hospital beds, especially in Bangkok. The government-run Ramathibodi Hospital announced it will stop accepting new walk-in patients starting Aug. 1 because of COVID. Also, the director of the government’s Mongkut Wattana Hospital, repeatedly calling the current situation “a public disaster,” bluntly warned residents not to dump sick COVID patients there in hopes that they can be admitted.

 

--The rising case counts and ill patients have left government officials scrambling to free up existing hospital beds and add new ones. On Tuesday, a government train carried some 135 COVID-positive residents from Bangkok back to their home provinces in the Northeast for isolation. Elsewhere, Bangkok officials said they were looking at converting sleeper train beds into temporary quarantine space for COVID patients showing no symptoms.

 

--Across the country with 14,150 total new cases on Tuesday, 39 of Thailand’s 77 provinces, a new high, reported more than 100 new COVID cases each, led by Bangkok with 2,635 and Samut Sakhon with 1,092. Plus three other provinces came close to making the 100+ list, each reporting 100 new cases.

 

--Bangkok province’s 2,635 new case count Tuesday rose slightly for the day, ending three days of declines, but remained well below the province’s July 10 record of 3,191 cases, as case growth was greater in outlying provinces. The government said 56 percent of Bangkok residents had received their first COVID vaccination shot as of July 25, but only 13 percent their full vaccination second shot.

 

--For foreign nationals, the government’s Bang Sue Central Vaccination Center in Bangkok will continue to allow limited walk-in vaccinations for those age 75 and above living in Bangkok and five adjoining provinces at least through the end of the month. For more info, see the website https://www.thailandintervac.com/

 

--Foreign nationals age 60 and above who live in those same six provinces can still pre-register online for Bang Sue appointments. And, starting in early August, a government spokesman said vaccinations at Bang Sue will be expanded to foreign nationals under age 60, but offered no further specifics.

 

 

Thank you for your daily summary, John. Much appreciated.

3 hours ago, dinsdale said:

Went there yesterday. Went pretty smoothly and took just over an hour and that includes the compulsory 30 minutes you have have to wait before you can leave. It was AZ but I forgot to ask if it was home grown or from the donation from Japan. Nurses aspirated the syringe before plunging. There were alot of people but I wouldn't call it overly crowded or choatic as it was spread over quite a large area and ran pretty well. Bit of a headache today (may not be juice related), a bit more tired than usual and my arm ached a little bit when I woke up during the night but nothing really. 

 

On another point a local 200 bed field hosptital is in chaos I have been told. Entire families turning up but it's full as is the local hospital. The system is about to burst.

I had my first AZ jab in June. Like you I had a mild headache. I felt fatigued for a week after but now I feel as right as rain. Second AZ jab scheduled for the beginning of September.

5 minutes ago, geriatrickid said:

Why bring up an alleged UDR membership?

How's your math?

The accused was identified as 46 years of age in the original  arrest report (based upon passport) and news reports in April. This means  his date of birth was 1974.

The UDR was disbanded in 1992.

Let's say he joined the British military when he was 18. If he was discharged, he would have been 18. 

You would have us accept that upon his discharge he  immediately ran over to the UDR to enlist?  Assuming he was accepted, and it is doubtful that the British military would allow someone dishonourably discharged to immediately re- enlist, he could not ave had much of an illustrious career serving for all of what? 2 weeks? a month?

 

In any case, the presumed military services of the accused is not relevant to this case.

 

And you know what else is not important? His religious faith, because whatever he did to that woman, his faith could not have been strong as cavorting with a naked woman out of wedlock is a sin.

He's actually 48 and well known in the local area. It's not an alleged UDR membership, he did actually belong to the UDR. Many of its members also had close ties with the UDA. No one said his religious faith is important concerning the murder but it is connected to his background.

I'm an Uster Scot from County Fermanagh so maybe I can clear a few things up for readers. The Ulster Banner ceased to be the official flag of N.I in 1973. Since then it has been the Union Flag. This guy is from a largely Protestant plantation village close to the Fermanagh border with the R.O.I. He served in the British Army (thrown out) and then became a Volunteer in the Ulster Defence Regiment. A member of the UDR from that area would have been at very serious risk from Republican paramilitaries. He's almost certainly a Loyalist.