Screening for COVID-19 to be stepped up

[snoop1130]

 

BANGKOK (NNT) - The Ministry of Public Health has addressed concerns brought up by the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administratio’s (CCSA) Adviser Dr. Udom Kachinthorn, who believes that there may be 6-7 million asymptomatic COVID-19 infected individuals yet to be discovered within the population.

 

Director of the Department of Disease Control’s Office of Emergency Disease and Health Threats, Dr. Chawetsan Namwat acknowledged today that according to epidemiological estimations, Dr. Udom’s observation is possible but not a cause for concern. He elaborated that symptomatic sufferers of the virus are easier to detect but asymptomatic infections can still be contained if everyone practices preventative measures.

 

The Ministry of Public Health is nevertheless screening for such cases and working to make Antigen Test Kits readily available to people entering restaurants and other public spaces. Addressing the high cost of the kits, the National Health Security Office has distributed 2.4 million free test kits in Bangkok and will continue to do so to satisfy demand.

 

Prime Minister’s Office Spokesperson Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana, has relayed the Prime Minister’s call for citizens to continue to employ Universal Prevention principles and the DMHTT approach to protecting themselves from COVID-19, as the pandemic has yet to be contained. All relevant agencies have been ordered to care for the public, and the PM again thanked medical workers for their hard work.

 

-- © Copyright NNT 2021-09-10

 

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[ikke1959]

More tests means more cases and that is what we don't want... we must reopen as soon as possible .. goal is October 1st and more cases will end in harder lockdown, Look at the daily numbers.. we test now so less that we only can percentages instead of formerly he number of PCR tests

[Soikhaonoiken]

A bit late in the day..... Once again.. 

[ukrules]

10 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

believes that there may be 6-7 million asymptomatic COVID-19 infected individuals yet to be discovered within the population

Wow, someone talking sense, maybe there's hope yet.

 

They will 'recover' within 1 to 2 weeks if they're asymptomatic, how many iterations of future infections will it take until this exhausts itself?

 

They truly are walking a different path now.

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by ukrules

[ukrules]

Also worth a mention, they passed a special immunity law recently which means they can just let it rip and there will be no consequences.

 

With such legal protections in place for our masters in Bangkok why would they do anything other than open it all up and allow 'the people' to get immunity the old fashioned way?

 

Everyone important has already been vaccinated, open the floodgates and the money will come flowing back into the country within 6 months.

 

Makes complete sense to me if you consider that it's all about money and those tourists that the Thai economy doesn't rely on or need in any way ????

[zzaa09]

7 hours ago, ikke1959 said:

More tests means more cases and that is what we don't want... we must reopen as soon as possible .. goal is October 1st and more cases will end in harder lockdown, Look at the daily numbers.. we test now so less that we only can percentages instead of formerly he number of PCR tests

Never could understand the real practical reasoning behind all this testing - anywhere. 

 

[ronster]

Seek and ye shall find ! ????

If they had mass tested people 6 months or so ago they might have realised they weren’t as brilliant as they thought . Their own self worth and ego of proclaiming look how amazing we are with our low numbers has now shot them in the foot . Yeah you had low numbers for months as you weren’t testing anyone !!

[hotchilli]

14 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

BANGKOK (NNT) - The Ministry of Public Health has addressed concerns brought up by the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administratio’s (CCSA) Adviser Dr. Udom Kachinthorn, who believes that there may be 6-7 million asymptomatic COVID-19 infected individuals yet to be discovered within the population.

step up the screening, what a novel idea.

[vandeventer]

32 minutes ago, hotchilli said:

step up the screening, what a novel idea.

Watch out when you bend over these may be the new and improved test kits?

[Danderman123]

2 hours ago, zzaa09 said:

Never could understand the real practical reasoning behind all this testing - anywhere. 

 

I guess you think it’s better to let the virus spread undetected.

[Sydebolle]

I'm not the brightest candle on the cake but the more you scan, the more actual positive numbers you obtain. Scan less = numbers drop, scan more = numbers up. 

Am I missing something? 

[Danderman123]

Just now, Sydebolle said:

I'm not the brightest candle on the cake but the more you scan, the more actual positive numbers you obtain. Scan less = numbers drop, scan more = numbers up. 

Am I missing something? 

Your observation has been previously posted here about 10,000 times.

 

There isn’t enough testing ™️.

[metisdead]

Please use discretion in your references to the government. Phrases which can be considered as anti-coup will be removed. Referring to Thailand or the government as a dictatorship, military dictatorship or other such terms will be removed.

[HeijoshinCool]

15 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana

.

 

Known to his friends as Tha Wang....

[HeijoshinCool]

19 minutes ago, Danderman123 said:

Your observation has been previously posted here about 10,000 times.

 

There isn’t enough testing ™️.

.

 

Yes, all the false positives are very helpful....

[buick]

2 hours ago, zzaa09 said:

Never could understand the real practical reasoning behind all this testing - anywhere. 

 

i agree.  certainly there is a time when mass testing is very, very critical.  but once the virus is loose, the mass testing doesn't carry the same level of importance.  let's just say it ranks 10 out of 10 on the critical scale at the beginning of an outbreak.  but it is probably at 3 considering where we stand in thailand today.  now is the time to focus on maintaining the healthcare system and expanding the vaccinations.

[dave moir]

6 hours ago, ukrules said:

Wow, someone talking sense, maybe there's hope yet.

 

They will 'recover' within 1 to 2 weeks if they're asymptomatic, how many iterations of future infections will it take until this exhausts itself?

 

They truly are walking a different path now.

 

It will never exhaust itself! They're on a roll!!!????

[wensiensheng]

Hmm, more testing to find asymptomatic cases so that the people can isolate and not infect others.

 

an interesting new concept for Thailand, but I’m sure I have heard it somewhere before. Ah right, I’ve got it now, in  most of the developed world.

[biezepol]

Testing or not, eventually everyone will get the flu.

[khunjeff]

16 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Addressing the high cost of the kits, the National Health Security Office has distributed 2.4 million free test kits in Bangkok and will continue to do so to satisfy demand.

They could also buy kits directly from manufacturers with a bulk discount, instead of from middlemen with a markup above retail, and they could waive all duties, import fees, and VAT - that would address the high cost.

[johnarth]

glad to see the news media has taken my advice and cut the corvid time down from an hour and a half to quarter of an hour plus a couple of adds, now the health of people will improve

[khunpa]

Besides just confirming that 6-7 million have Covid, I don’t see the point or idea?

 

You can’t isolate 6-7 million people anyway and the Delta variant is too infectious to stop. We will all end up getting infected at some point anyway.

 

Just get people vaccinated and then open the country, so people can start earning money again.

 

 

 

[Danderman123]

42 minutes ago, biezepol said:

Testing or not, eventually everyone will get the flu.

Maybe one of the many forms of influenza. But that is not to say that everyone will get the specific form of Coronavirus (SARS-Covid-2) that is killing so many people. 

[Danderman123]

13 minutes ago, khunpa said:

 

 

Just get people vaccinated and then open the country, so people can start earning money again.

 

That is the current plan for Thailand, more or less. 

[Cake Monster]

8 hours ago, ukrules said:

Wow, someone talking sense, maybe there's hope yet.

 

They will 'recover' within 1 to 2 weeks if they're asymptomatic, how many iterations of future infections will it take until this exhausts itself?

 

They truly are walking a different path now.

 

The Authorities are not walking a different path.

Its the same path, but now, they are more or less forced to become transparent on the testing number due to this being pinged by the UK for one of the reasons Thailand was placed on the Red List.

Another was not doing enough testing to seek out if new Variants were present in the Country.

[Bangkok Barry]

18 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Addressing the high cost of the kits, the National Health Security Office has distributed 2.4 million free test kits in Bangkok

Around 80% or more of people in Thailand do not live in Bangkok. Worth mentioning to a government that appears to be oblivious to the fact.

[Chiang Mai Will]

7 hours ago, ronster said:

Seek and ye shall find ! ????

If they had mass tested people 6 months or so ago they might have realised they weren’t as brilliant as they thought . Their own self worth and ego of proclaiming look how amazing we are with our low numbers has now shot them in the foot . Yeah you had low numbers for months as you weren’t testing anyone !!

SIX months ago? It should have been done over TWELVE months ago"

[khunPer]

The asymptomatic cases - or the gray number, as it's also called at some places - have been known about since the beginning of the pandemic. A good questions is, do they matters?

 

Denmark is the nation that has performed the highest number of test in their population, in fact the number equals testing the whole population of 5.8 million population more than 12 times, and still there are about 20% Danes that has never been near a test station. If you need to find all asymptomatic cases, you need to test the entire population with a very short time frame; a good questions is, if can change anything?

 

It's mentioned in the media that Covid-virus can still spread even from vaccinated people - what about those that have already been infected, can they also still spread the virus? - and a number of countries now says that Covid is something we are going to live with in the furture, just like influenza, but only few will get sick if the majority of the population have been vaccinated.

 

One of these countries is Denmark with 70+ percent of it's population vaccinated, and now fully reopened with all restrictions removed. But Denmark still reported 557 new cases yesterday - 10th Sepember, no numbers yet for today, time difference - which relative to size of population would equal 6,700 new cases if it's population was of Thailand's size, i.e. 70 million; Thailand had 14,403 new cases yesterday. Denmark still has 8,725 active cases, i.e. 105,000 if it's population was 70 million - Thailand has 141,602 - of which 29 are serious or critical cases, i.e. 348 if Thai-size population, Thailand has 4,387 serious or critical cases, which might well be caused by a much lower rate of vaccination.

 

Looking at fatality rate, denmark has 448 deaths per million - Thailand is so far only 199 deaths per million - and a total of 2,608 deaths with Covid during the epidemic, which started in February 2019, so during 1½ year. A serious influenza season in Denmark takes about 2,500 lives within a year, a normal unfluenza season takes around 1,500; it 2018 there were 2,118 deaths. For comparison, vulnerable people are offered influenza-vaccination, there were no vaccine available in the first half of the Covid pandemic. The effects of lockdowns and use of face masks are unknown, they probably had great protective effects, but in numbers Covid has not been worse than influenza.

 

For comparison I quote from World Heath Rankings: According to the latest WHO data published in 2018 Influenza and Pneumonia Deaths in Thailand reached 44,549 or 9.11% of total deaths. The age adjusted Death Rate is 47.82 per 100,000 of population ranks Thailand #70 in the world.

Note that 44,579 died from Influenza and pneumonia in 2018, so far 13,920 have died from Covid.

 

My modest point is, that massive testing in search for some asymptomatic cases at this point of the epidemic might well be waste of resources - they might just be a fairly useless number in the statistics, if not the whole population is tested within a very short time-frame - whilst vaccination efforts matters to reducere serious and critical cases. The local outbreak on Koh Samui, the so-called "Black Club cluster", showed that vaccinated people only got mild symptoms or no symptoms - i.e. they were not really sick - and it was both those vaccinated with Sinovac, and those with only one jab AstraZeneca.

 

We might have to get used to that Covid exists, just like influenza.

 

Source links: WorldOMeter; World Health Rankings.

 

[Kwaibill]

11 hours ago, ukrules said:

Wow, someone talking sense, maybe there's hope yet.

 

They will 'recover' within 1 to 2 weeks if they're asymptomatic, how many iterations of future infections will it take until this exhausts itself?

 

They truly are walking a different path now.

 

More asymptomatic cases will  speed up the arrival of the poorly understood "herd immunity", but at what cost? Better to gain endemic status vs pandemic by achieving 90% vaccination than allowing up to 19+%(Yemen) mortality in affected individuals.

Source:

"COVID-19 pandemic death rates by country - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country

 

[Kwaibill]

1 hour ago, khunPer said:

The asymptomatic cases - or the gray number, as it's also called at some places - have been known about since the beginning of the pandemic. A good questions is, do they matters?

 

Denmark is the nation that has performed the highest number of test in their population, in fact the number equals testing the whole population of 5.8 million population more than 12 times, and still there are about 20% Danes that has never been near a test station. If you need to find all asymptomatic cases, you need to test the entire population with a very short time frame; a good questions is, if can change anything?

 

It's mentioned in the media that Covid-virus can still spread even from vaccinated people - what about those that have already been infected, can they also still spread the virus? - and a number of countries now says that Covid is something we are going to live with in the furture, just like influenza, but only few will get sick if the majority of the population have been vaccinated.

 

One of these countries is Denmark with 70+ percent of it's population vaccinated, and now fully reopened with all restrictions removed. But Denmark still reported 557 new cases yesterday - 10th Sepember, no numbers yet for today, time difference - which relative to size of population would equal 6,700 new cases if it's population was of Thailand's size, i.e. 70 million; Thailand had 14,403 new cases yesterday. Denmark still has 8,725 active cases, i.e. 105,000 if it's population was 70 million - Thailand has 141,602 - of which 29 are serious or critical cases, i.e. 348 if Thai-size population, Thailand has 4,387 serious or critical cases, which might well be caused by a much lower rate of vaccination.

 

Looking at fatality rate, denmark has 448 deaths per million - Thailand is so far only 199 deaths per million - and a total of 2,608 deaths with Covid during the epidemic, which started in February 2019, so during 1½ year. A serious influenza season in Denmark takes about 2,500 lives within a year, a normal unfluenza season takes around 1,500; it 2018 there were 2,118 deaths. For comparison, vulnerable people are offered influenza-vaccination, there were no vaccine available in the first half of the Covid pandemic. The effects of lockdowns and use of face masks are unknown, they probably had great protective effects, but in numbers Covid has not been worse than influenza.

 

For comparison I quote from World Heath Rankings: According to the latest WHO data published in 2018 Influenza and Pneumonia Deaths in Thailand reached 44,549 or 9.11% of total deaths. The age adjusted Death Rate is 47.82 per 100,000 of population ranks Thailand #70 in the world.

Note that 44,579 died from Influenza and pneumonia in 2018, so far 13,920 have died from Covid.

 

My modest point is, that massive testing in search for some asymptomatic cases at this point of the epidemic might well be waste of resources - they might just be a fairly useless number in the statistics, if not the whole population is tested within a very short time-frame - whilst vaccination efforts matters to reducere serious and critical cases. The local outbreak on Koh Samui, the so-called "Black Club cluster", showed that vaccinated people only got mild symptoms or no symptoms - i.e. they were not really sick - and it was both those vaccinated with Sinovac, and those with only one jab AstraZeneca.

 

We might have to get used to that Covid exists, just like influenza.

 

Source links: WorldOMeter; World Health Rankings.

 

Yes, Sars 2 is likely to become endemic as have influenza and the common cold.

Influenza and Covid have similar profiles; both are respiratory viruses transmitted almost excusively via interpersonal contact, and with multiple "variants", making the annual forecast of which vaccine combo will be most effective a bit of a <deleted> shoot.

Fewer people would also die of influenza if they bothered to get that jab, each year.

And pneumonia. One of my best friends, a robust trucker and Vietnam vet, died of pneumonia a few years back because he wad tough, and thought he just had a bad cold until too late to be saved.

Get your jabs!

Protect the "herd".????