Thailand reports another fall in new COVID-19 infections

[polpott]

1 hour ago, Sheryl said:

 

They are testing all contacts of identified cases.

 

The rate of positivity in Bangkok is way too low to make random mass testing remotely worthwhile.

 

The population of Bangkok is 11 million. 23 cases is not at all a  lot.

Chonburi are doing more than that. targeted testing on migrant worker accommodation, factories, taxi drivers and other groups that have a high contact level with the public. No cases found in Banglamung (Pattaya) for more than 2 weeks, Chonburi 2 in 2 weeks. No real value in increasing the numbers tested.

 

People seem to think that the testing is working in Western countries. My friend in the UK knows 2 people who died in the first wave and last week a mutual friend of ours died after 3 days in hospital. None had been subject to random testing. My friend lives in a high risk area and has never been offered a test.

 

 

 

[tifino]

Just now, FarFlungFalang said:

Every year the UK health system gets to breaking point dealing with flues an common colds and it seems this year is no different except doing massive testing to see if those that died had a cold in the previous month.I still haven't seen any bodies lining the streets and haven't seen people keeling over on any videos since those in China what's with that?  

 maybe it is more likely the videos of Wuhan 'victims' falling in the street;

 - were 5 year Plan starvation victims...

[bkk6060]

1 hour ago, Sheryl said:

 

They are testing all contacts of identified cases.

 

The rate of positivity in Bangkok is way too low to make random mass testing remotely worthwhile.

 

The population of Bangkok is 11 million. 23 cases is not at all a  lot.

I agree, but because of this it would not be difficult to identify where they walked in.

Was it lower Sukhumvit and they went to Bumrungrad?

Have they been riding the skytrain or MRT?

Just sayin. 

[FarFlungFalang]

14 minutes ago, tifino said:

 maybe it is more likely the videos of Wuhan 'victims' falling in the street;

 - were 5 year Plan starvation victims...

They were pretty effective in getting the story hungry medias attention so they did their job and then the media and the common cold did the rest.Thankfully we have vaccines we can buy to save us from getting seriously ill from it.For those that think they get the vaccine for free they are bought using tax you paid.So big pharma get to gouge you wether you take the vaccine or not, sneaky kents!

[JHicks]

1 hour ago, FarFlungFalang said:

I've noticed there are no reports of any of the reported walk ins having infected anybody

 

1 hour ago, Sheryl said:

They are testing all contacts of identified cases.

 

Until recently I'd assumed they did that, but I can't square it with the fact that all the recent Bangkok cases are walk-ins. It's just not possible that none of the walk-in cases infected anyone else, and yet - unless I've missed something - no trace and test cases have been reported.

[Nout]

2 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

That to me is just more evidence it is widely in the population and just not been tested for 

It doesn't seem that way when you are here, which we are.  Where are you?

[FritsSikkink]

1 hour ago, ThailandRyan said:

It is a constant number testing positive as a walk-in in Bangkok apparently, so what can that tell you if its ignored.  It is here, but many choose to stay in and not get treatment due to mild symptoms and it goes away?, many asymptomatic?, or maybe many more who just do not want to pay the cost of the test and then the hospital or State isolation facilities, and if they are Thai well then maybe they don't want to loose work and money.  Many scared folks.  If the testing was free, and isolation could be done outside of a facility instead of being locked in, like in Samut Sakhon, we might see either an easing of cases as treatment could be undertaken, or increased numbers.  One shall never know, as the Government is playing this very close to the vest as well as the obtaining and procurement of Vaccines.

You are constantly assuming all kind of things but have no proof what so ever. Let the numbers speak for themselves.

[Nout]

57 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

Similar to your whole post

Yes but he is not determining government policy and altering the course of peoples lives. Big difference.

[meltonpie]

31 minutes ago, polpott said:

Chonburi are doing more than that. targeted testing on migrant worker accommodation, factories, taxi drivers and other groups that have a high contact level with the public. No cases found in Banglamung (Pattaya) for more than 2 weeks, Chonburi 2 in 2 weeks. No real value in increasing the numbers tested.

 

People seem to think that the testing is working in Western countries. My friend in the UK knows 2 people who died in the first wave and last week a mutual friend of ours died after 3 days in hospital. None had been subject to random testing. My friend lives in a high risk area and has never been offered a test.

 

 

 

But your friend could have had a free test any time they wanted

Edited February 6, 2021 by meltonpie

[Cake Monster]

2 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

So if they have that many walk ins in Bangkok, why are they not testing proactively here.  Would be nice to have some idea of where and when these folks were infected.  It might just keep the misses and I from going to certain places.  We walked 12km yesterday evening and visited many locales from Sathon to Sukhumvit and a few malls and side sois getting fruit from some of the vendors on the street.

I read this Morning in a Bangkok newspaper that there appeared to be a potential " Hotspot " in 5 District that are in the Western area of Bangkok.

This will come as little surprise to many, as this is the Location closest to Samut Sakhon

 

[lkv]

2 hours ago, rabas said:

It's working!  

 

... for now.  Let's see what B.1.1.7 does when it gets here.

 

It's already in Thailand most likely, but as with covid cases, you have to look for it to find it, aka genome sequencing, which I don't feel the Thai government has been very proactive in doing.

Edited February 6, 2021 by lkv

[meltonpie]

1 hour ago, Sheryl said:

 

They are testing all contacts of identified cases.

 

The rate of positivity in Bangkok is way too low to make random mass testing remotely worthwhile.

 

The population of Bangkok is 11 million. 23 cases is not at all a  lot.

 

What rate of positivity do you require in Bangkok before you would consider mass testing to be worthwhile?

Whatever level you come up with, I suspect it will be a sufficient number of cases for the cat to be well and truly out of the bag.

And i think I recall from a previous question I asked, that you would be happy to wait for all these initial new cases to be determined by walk ins?  Is that correct?

[Sheryl]

13 minutes ago, Cake Monster said:

I read this Morning in a Bangkok newspaper that there appeared to be a potential " Hotspot " in 5 District that are in the Western area of Bangkok.

This will come as little surprise to many, as this is the Location closest to Samut Sakhon

 

And it is specifically among factory workers there. Who tend to live and work in defined areas.

[Sheryl]

16 minutes ago, meltonpie said:

 

What rate of positivity do you require in Bangkok before you would consider mass testing to be worthwhile?

Whatever level you come up with, I suspect it will be a sufficient number of cases for the cat to be well and truly out of the bag.

And i think I recall from a previous question I asked, that you would be happy to wait for all these initial new cases to be determined by walk ins?  Is that correct?

 

A positivity rate of less than 5% is internationally accepted criteria. Above that, the epidemic is not under control and testing needs to widen.

 

The rate in Bangkok -- even with testing targeted to people at particular risk (rather than the indiscriminate mass testing you advocate) is well under 1%

 

Testing is extremely expensive to conduct. Millions of baht are being spent on it currently. What you advocate would run into trillions and for little purpose. From a public health standpoint there is no need to know, to the last decimal point, the exact prevalence in the population. Nor even to identify 100% of cases. What is important is to contain spread. Which is being effectively done.

 

It calls for testing of contacts and of high risk groups. Which is being done. And the extent of testing is being adjusted according ot the positivity rate.

 

[Cake Monster]

2 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

And it is specifically among factory workers there. Who tend to live and work in defined areas.

This new potential spike in cases will not be specific among Factory Workers as the Press statement would have us believe.

The Virus has proven all around the World that it really does not care where or how it gets a hold within populations.

[meltonpie]

1 hour ago, Sheryl said:

 

 

 

Thailand has excellent epidemiologists and they closely examine each identified case and trace all contacts.  Public announcements are made whenever it appears there may have been transmission at a public venue.

 

23 cases in a city of 11 million....most of the world would love to have that level of infection.  In New York City, about 5,000 new cases a day and about the same number in hospital at a given time.

Could you clarify if the excellent epidemiologists are carrying out genomic sequencing?  I note someone asked a question about the UK variant.  Is Thailand drilling down to find what strains are present?

 

Its a bit odd to compare Bangkok to New York at this time.  Everyone is well aware of the nightmare issues New York has had.  Surely no one would want Bangkok to experience the same problems?  If that can be prevented that must be a good thing.

 

If there is one city in the world that takes Covid seriously now it is New York.  The number of cases will be, to a large extent, determined by the number of tests.  You can see here how testing is taken seriously:

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-testing.page

 

and here how reporting is taken seriously:

https://projects.thecity.nyc/2020_03_covid-19-tracker/

 

If you were to track back to the start of the pandemic, New York (like everywhere else) was in denial and ill prepared for what was to come.  If case numbers in Bangkok were to grow in a similar exponential rate to NY the impact would be truly devastating.

Doing more mass testing seems prudent.  The only possible argument against it is cost.

That relatively small cost will be insignificant compared to what it might become.

[Sheryl]

4 minutes ago, meltonpie said:

Doing more mass testing seems prudent.  The only possible argument against it is cost.

That relatively small cost will be insignificant compared to what it might become.

 

It is not a relatively small cost. It would be a huge cost to do what you advocate -- hundreds of millions of baht -- and would divert resources from much more important measures.

 

Testing is being done based on solid public health standards, and tens of millions of baht are a;ready being spent on it. Targeted towards groups at risk and adjusted in scope to the positivity rate.

[Bkk Brian]

33 minutes ago, Nout said:

Yes but he is not determining government policy and altering the course of peoples lives. Big difference.

He's bringing in the UK to a thread on Thailand. He's also suggesting Neil Ferguson is the sole advisor the UK listens to. That's incorrect and there have been many studies on the UK variant by other scientists. This poster lost all credibility with me when he spread lies saying Larry King had received the covid 19 vaccine 2 weeks prior to his death.

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1204606-severe-side-effects-to-covid-19-vaccination-cases-very-rare/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-16223716

 

[FarFlungFalang]

46 minutes ago, FritsSikkink said:

You are constantly assuming all kind of things but have no proof what so ever. Let the numbers speak for themselves.

Do you have any reason to believe the numbers of a government rank 104th in the world for transparency and corruption?Maybe the numbers speak with a forked tongue!

[lkv]

22 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

The rate in Bangkok -- even with testing targeted to people at particular risk (rather than the indiscriminate mass testing you advocate) is well under 1%

 

I see, so the positivity rate in Samut Sakhon is 50%, because they tested, and Bangkok under 1%, because they have not tested and report the cases found to the total numbers of tests, i.e the ones in Samut Sakhon only. And they limited that to 2,000, because if they tested 10,000, they would find 5,000 cases per day in Thailand and that would not look good at all.

Edited February 6, 2021 by lkv

[FarFlungFalang]

19 minutes ago, meltonpie said:

Could you clarify if the excellent epidemiologists are carrying out genomic sequencing?  I note someone asked a question about the UK variant.  Is Thailand drilling down to find what strains are present?

This seems to be a question best avoided!The UK are doing huge numbers of genomic testing from what I hear and Thailand is doing absolutely none from what I hear.Hear no evil,see no evil speak with forked tongue.

[FarFlungFalang]

25 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

The rate in Bangkok -- even with testing targeted to people at particular risk (rather than the indiscriminate mass testing you advocate) is well under 1%

Can you supply a link to this data?

[FarFlungFalang]

21 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

It is not a relatively small cost. It would be a huge cost to do what you advocate -- hundreds of millions of baht -- and would divert resources from much more important measures.

Compared to the trillions being lost in tourist revenue a few hundred million is small change.Yes it would divert money from much more important submarines and such like I suppose.

[FarFlungFalang]

53 minutes ago, meltonpie said:

But your friend could have had a free test any time they wanted

The tests are not free they are paid for by tax revenue they get from those being tested.Big medicine is making a fortune from this pandemic and most, if not all, of it comes from tax money.

[BKKBike09]

All these statistics are essentially pointless without proper context. If 23 people or whatever test positive in Bangkok hospitals, and at 23 different Bangkok hospitals, that could speak to widespread but potentially low-level community infections across Bangkok. If those people all test positive at only two hospitals, that could indicate clusters in the specific catchment areas of those two hospitals. Or it could mean that those are the only two hospitals testing people. Or any one of numerous different scenarios. 

 

Frankly it's all rather tedious. Plus PCR testing, as we now know, is quite dependent on the calibration of the test equipment. This from the BMJ two days ago:

 

"Laboratory based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are often seen as the “gold standard” test for identifying clinical cases of infection. But they take time, are relatively expensive per sample, and are not very portable, because of the need for laboratory processing. They are also not perfect, detecting viral shedding long after the infectious period, with people continuing to test positive for a mean of 17 days. This means that people who are not infectious are unnecessarily quarantined."

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n287

 

Personally I can't see how the spread of what was supposed to be the 'more infectious' Myanmar strain, in Myanmar, since August last year, coupled with a swiss cheese border, can't translate into a spread of infections in Thailand over the past 6 months. Sure, most migrant workers live in segregated communities / accommodation, but they interact with Thais all the time. They shop at wet markets, they shop at convenience stores, they use ATMs.

 

Still, if on paper Thailand is doing a great job, good for them. If I could be bothered I'd try to dig up stats on monthly death rates for 2020. Theoretically these should have declined because - as has been the case in many other countries - mask wearing and distancing etc has reduced spread of seasonal flu and associated deaths. If death rates from viral pneumonia etc haven't gone down, that might indicate those were actually covid-related deaths. Or maybe not.

 

It's all could / may / might. And now it's panic time about 'new' mutations. Is there ever going to be an end to this?

 

 

 

[rabas]

1 hour ago, lkv said:

 

It's already in Thailand most likely, but as with covid cases, you have to look for it to find it, aka genome sequencing, which I don't feel the Thai government has been very proactive in doing.

Thailand has excellent biotech and genomic capabilities, much of it academic.

 

Thailand was the first country to identity a COVID patient outside of China and did so using genomic sequencing, because COVID tests did not exist anywhere including China. They continued using genomic sequencing until tests were available. They were one of the first countries to develop their own PCR testing and submitted their test codes to the UN/WHO.

 

At the begining of the second wave, they announced that genomes where the  GH strain, a derivative of the Western 'G' strain the came through India/Myanmar.

 

I agree B.1.1.7 might already have been introduced here. By the way, I assume they sequence everyone in ASQ, that's how they stopped 4 Brits with the new strain.

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by rabas

[FarFlungFalang]

2 hours ago, Sheryl said:

The rate of positivity in Bangkok is way too low to make random mass testing remotely worthwhile.

Do you have a link to this data?

[polpott]

1 hour ago, lkv said:

 

It's already in Thailand most likely, but as with covid cases, you have to look for it to find it, aka genome sequencing, which I don't feel the Thai government has been very proactive in doing.

Very few countries, other than the UK, have.

[polpott]

2 hours ago, FarFlungFalang said:

Every year the UK health system gets to breaking point dealing with flues an common colds and it seems this year is no different except doing massive testing to see if those that died had a cold in the previous month.I still haven't seen any bodies lining the streets and haven't seen people keeling over on any videos since those in China what's with that?  

My daughter and her husband both work on the frontlie in a UK hospital. They assure me that your post is complete fiction.

[FarFlungFalang]

20 minutes ago, BKKBike09 said:

It's all could / may / might. And now it's panic time about 'new' mutations. Is there ever going to be an end to this?

It will end when the sales of vaccines ends and no doubt the vaccines will produce more resistant mutations of the common cold virus which will require more tweaking and revaccinations so no end in sight at this stage.A missing element is the lack of an increase in all cause fatalities around the world outside of the UK.