Petey11

Any figures as stated are down to testing, and as in the OP, Thailand's are very low per Capita. Be interesting to see UK's figures come April when ATKs are no longer free unless you're in a vulnerable group. I know a fair number of people in Thailand who have tested positive and never been officially counted either by PCR or probable ATKs. Even the UK has an official undercount if you go by the ONS figures. Severe cases and deaths are the best guide now, both of which have crept up in Thailand over the past weeks. Time for Thai to get their vulnerable triple jabbed I think.

5 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

Positivity rate is a bit alarming.

 

 

Shows how little testing they do regards the true amount off infection in the community.

8 hours ago, alex8912 said:

You just get a usually free test in your home country before arriving. No need to be nervous on a long flight at all. Easy peasy. If Singapore and Singapore air can drop their previous 2 day before PCR test for transit then anyone can. There are many Singapore residents who work at the airport everyday. I was there along with a lot of other travelers on Friday. I was surprised that I met 3 people coming to Thailand for two weeks or less as well before boarding. Two were coming for the first time. All were real tourists. If the tests and especially the insurance is dropped tourism will pick up within weeks. 

Positive in your own country you can reschedule, positive on arrival or day 5 your done for. If those in charge of Thailand don't realize that this is the reason tourism won't take off, then nothing will change. Do away with arrival and day 5 test and I would seriously consider returning even with PCR before flight. 

10 hours ago, blazes said:

The argument over "with" or "of" Covid has been active for most of the pandemic, but now that several countries are beginning to "confess" to this kind of double counting, let's hope the ....er....truth will come out all over the world and some re-calculation of the numbers will be attempted.  

It may yet turn out that we have suffered the lockdown $hite for no very good reason.

With or of is a good point, heart attack death and they had COVID, definitely with but a lot of conditions like diabetes etc, COVID can likely be a contributing factor. A lot of underlying conditions can be lived with for many years but COVID just pushes them over the edge. Must remember COVID does not just cause lung problems, it can cause many other problems leading to organ failure. 

6 hours ago, Geoffggi said:

Don't know how this thing works but obviously some kind of "Health & Safety" review is needed to reduce the possibility of this happening again.

Think some common sense is needed, don't get in front of a harvester machine. Darwin's law RIP.

Expect the Thai government are thinking of ways to exploit the huge trade opportunity that has opened up with all other countries imposing sanctions

1. There will be many times the number of infections in children than reported. 2. Probably find those2.2% have severe underlying conditions. I posted on Saturdays thread about BBC radio programme I had listened to on covid and children. Outcome was the risk is very low indeed for healthy children. This news also coincides with the push for vaccination of young children, coincidence?

1 hour ago, anchadian said:

Bangkok is monitoring 54 clusters of Covid-19 infections, mostly found in schools, elderly care facilities, construction workers’ camps and workplaces, said director of BMA’s heath department.

@TNAMCOT

 

https://twitter.com/TNAMCOTEnglish/status/1495687836028534784

 

Stop talking clusters, it's widespread. Omicron spreads like wildfire, measures put in place will only slow it's spread. If they tried contact tracing proper the system would be overwhelmed, days of doing that are done with unless you want go Chinese style mass city lockdowns.

9 hours ago, mommysboy said:

It's a posting I gave great thought to having listened to many sources, including very recently 'More or Less' on BBC podcasts. Check it out- fascinating and 100% reliable.  But I should have defined the young as under 11, perhaps. I think stats tend to be examined a little more in the UK, even if they do go against the grain.

Listened to that show tonight driving back from dropping my daughter off and found it interesting and enlightening. Think they said there were 136 deaths of children (sub 18yrs) within 28 days of positive test and 76 of those were from covid, and hospitalisations were nearly all from children with quite severe co-morbididity factors. This was over the last 2 years, but child excess deaths over the last 2 years we're 15% less than expected, due to the lower amount of other viruses circulating like flu, etc. Plus they were also throwing into the mix the high probability of covid cases been greatly under counted in children due to the fact that a large percentage are in fact asymptomatic and have never tested for it. Another figure I heard reported was that they estimate 73% of children in the UK have had covid since the pandemic begun. My overall take on it is that the risk to healthy children is extremely low. Personally I'm leaning towards the non-vacvination of my own daughter. A pro vaccine advert from NHS England quoting 1 in 100 children who have covid are admitted to hospital was withdrawn with them saying the data was out of date. In reality a pediatrician said that figure came from incidental admissions where children were testing positive after been admitted for traumas, etc, totally unconnected to covid.

2 hours ago, Cake Monster said:

Surely BKK Brian,

If the positivity is 62 % on Phuket, with a number of 496, then the number of infections for arrivals is 90, something is wrong with the Math, or am I seeing something wrong. ?.

90 a percentage of 496 is roughly 15 % of the total infections, not 3 %, and 15 % of 62 % is 9 % of the total population tested positive.

I am confused, me thinks.

Have to remember every tourist is tested twice, whether they have symptoms or not. Locals are probably only testing if they don't feel well or they are forced too with regards to close contacts or employment.

5 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

I am a tad confused as to why Thailands cases are completely different to other countries who had a serious spike with omicron.  What is really occurring?

 

As of tomorrow morning Masks in California become optional for stores, being out in the public, eating at restaurants and while visiting entertainment venues.   

Its because they only really test people who come to hospital or test because they feel ill enough to want to seek medical attention and Omicron been very mild disease in most people they never seek medical attention. The Thai way of isolation puts people off testing as well I believe. Test positive, isolate, who's going to put food on the table and pay the rent?

7 hours ago, Virt said:

The positivity rate are not always an indication of to few tests being done.

 

During most of the pandemic here in Denmark we were below 5%, and tested most per million in the world.

So that gave us a good indication of the real numbers.

 

Omicron totally messed that up and we're now at positives % near 30% the last week.

 

 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/positive-rate-daily-smoothed?tab=chart&time=2020-04-16..latest&country=~DNK

 

 

 

That's because so many are infected and we changed the guidelines for PCR testing. 

Now you're just supposed to take a test if you have symptoms or close contact with a person tested positive, so now it's a more targeted group that get tested.

 

We also dropped all restrictions and that means no need for negative tests anymore for the unvaxed, for them being able to visit restaurants and such.

So that's a large group that stopped testing several times a week, which also narrows the target group.

 

We're still testing approx 40 times more than Thailand per million, so our daily numbers of positives are still a lot closer to the truth compared to Thailand.

 

 

 

But this mass testing is extremely expensive and they are talking about dropping the mass PCR testing.

After omicron arrived and omicron BA.2 sub variant is almost 100% dominant, we really don't need the data to show if 1000 or 100000 is infected each day.

We can look at the daily data for those in ICU instead, and that's not worrying even if we still have HUGE numbers of positives.

 

Thailands 610 admissions to ICU are higher than it's supposed to be so i would assume they still have a lot of Delta cases.

If all in ICU are omicron something is not right.

 

Does Thailand have a statistic showing which variant the ones in ICU are tested positive for?

 

It could be that a low number of people have had a booster and others have only had two shots of the sino vaccines. As stated by medical professionals evidence shows that a third shot is required to give greater protection to those who are vulnerable.

2 hours ago, FarFlungFalang said:

As Bkk Brian has noted Thailand never really did mass testing anyway so not much point in counting, just treat the sick instead of counting those that are not sick.Time to move on.

Just let tourists visit and still lock them up in quarantine when they test positive. You stop counting the infections then you have to stop testing the tourists as well or it really shows the true intentions of what they see the tourists as, a cash cow.

3 minutes ago, FarFlungFalang said:

Time to stop all this mass testing and follow Sweden back to the old normal

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-10/sweden-stops-mass-covid-19-testing/100820856

Think of the money they will lose from hospitalising tourists.

3 hours ago, anchadian said:

Thailand is unlikely to lockdown again or close its borders despite increased infections

 

Despite increasing covid infection numbers due to the Omicron variant, Thailand is unlikely reimplement a nationwide lockdown or close its borders to international travelers, a senior doctor told Thai Enquirer on Thursday.

 

https://www.thaienquirer.com/37387/thailand-is-unlikely-to-lockdown-again-or-close-its-borders-despite-increased-infections/

Unlikely to close borders but want to stop reporting infections whilst still having restrictions on incoming tourists. You want to stop reporting numbers, then remove all restrictions for incoming tourists, maybe just a negative test before flight. No more test on arrival, 5th day test and no enforced hospital quarantine. Removing daily reporting of infections whilst still having restrictions and hospitalisation of tourists is not going boost the tourism numbers, will have the opposite effect in my opinion.

4 hours ago, josephbloggs said:

No it doesn't.  This is a TVF perpetuated myth.  Long ago, yes, now, no.

So if I visit Thailand as a tourist, rent a condo for maybe 3 weeks and test positive on day 5 I will be allowed to self isolate in that rented condo? Really? Please enlighten me. I'm talking about tourist visitors, not expat residents