2 hours ago, Bkk Brian said:

Going from what I've read, a country declaring an infectious disease endemic is a decision based on their level of acceptance to the impact of it on society, ie deaths, severe illness and the health service. So yes it has to be at a low enough level for those aspects to be taken into account.

 

Flu is endemic but a lot of work goes on behind the scenes by public health depts for vaccinations and preparing for particularly bad strains that can come. Thailand would need to be constantly monitoring the level of infection for covid to remain low enough to be endemic, not something I trust them doing so much due to their poor testing even when their is a full blown outbreak.

 

Anyway I do recommend this twitter thread by an epidemiologist and assistant professor from Boston Public Health on the complexities of classifying covid endemic what it means and what needs to be done to keep it that way.

 

Well worth a read of the full string of tweets:

 

"Everyone keeps talking about covid becoming endemic, but as I listen to the conversation, it’s becoming more & more clear to me that very few of you know what “endemic” means. So here’s a thread on how pandemics end.

 

https://twitter.com/EpiEllie/status/1444088804961304581

 

Interesting read, thanks for the link. As he states in his writing, the world's leaders have to decide what level of acceptance to have with covid and, much like flu I suspect, countries will reach that stage through vaccination and monitoring. As the WHO has said until poorer countries get it under control through vaccination there is always the threat of a nasty mutation cropping up. Could say the world got lucky and Omicron mutated into a more transmissible but less deadly strain but it could easily go the other way.

1 hour ago, dinsdale said:

And yet infections are going down. 

Ah but maybe the reduction in Omicron cases is slower than the reduction in Delta, maybe that's what he meant to say, TBH I don't believe anything that comes out of the mouths of officials when it relates to covid in Thailand.

2 hours ago, dinsdale said:

And yet infections are going down. 

Per the official numbers, yes. 

 

I would look at hospital admissions to get a better picture of the level of infections in Thailand. 

Thailand reports 7,681 new COVID-19 cases, 22 deaths, 3,350 recoveries

 

File photo

 

Thailand on Wednesday (January 12) reported 7,681 new COVID-19 cases, 3,350 recoveries and 22 additional deaths over the past 24 hours. 

 

Full story: https://aseannow.com/topic/1246405-thailand-reports-7681-new-covid-19-cases-22-deaths-3350-recoveries/

 

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