COVID-19 - May 4: Thailand reports 9,288 new coronavirus cases, 19,119 recoveries, 82 deaths

[webfact]

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Thailand on Wednesday (May 4) reported 9,288 new COVID-19 cases, 19,119 recoveries and 82 additional deaths over the past 24 hours. 

 

Wednesday’s cases bring the total number of COVID-19 infections in Thailand to 4,290,824 with 28,860 deaths.

 

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[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Thailand Narrows Method of Counting Daily COVID Deaths, Leading to Sudden Decline in Official Death Statistics

 

[English translation above added]

Source Link

 

 

With Thailand anxious to reinvigorate its COVID battered tourism industry and broader economy, the local COVID news headlines and government reporting during the past week must have seemed like a kind of salvation – daily COVID deaths declining markedly, as much as 40 percent in just a matter of days.

 

The casual news follower might easily assume it’s a good sign reflecting the COVID situation in Thailand getting better, or perhaps medical treatments and new drugs now two-plus years into the pandemic during a better job of keeping COVID patients alive, especially during the current Omicron variant wave.

 

But in fact, Thailand’s rapidly falling official daily COVID death numbers in recent days aren’t primarily related to either of those factors, but instead, to the Thai government very quietly changing and narrowing what it counts and reports as official daily COVID deaths starting May 1.

 

The change is reflected in a tiny footnote added to the Ministry of Public Health’s daily COVID death reports starting May 1, where it noted that from now on, only deaths that the government considers to be “from” COVID will be tallied and officially reported, meaning those deemed to have died “with” COVID, which have been counted for the past two-plus years, will no longer be reported.

 

The effect of the policy change has been stark: Thailand tied its year-high number of official COVID deaths on April 29 with 129 under the old policy, followed by 126 on April 30. But then when the new counting policy took effect on May 1, the daily official COVID deaths count fell to 91 on May 1, 84 on May 2, and finally 77 on May 3 – a 40 percent decline from the yearly high in just the span of four days.

 

The change in how Thailand counts its COVID deaths comes just after the government had ominously predicted that official COVID deaths could hit up to 250 per day in the wake of the mid-April Songkran New Year’s holidays. And it comes amid the government attempting to relax current COVID restrictions along with possibly downgrading the country’s COVID outbreak to “endemic” status provided key statistics continue to improve in the coming months.

 

The Thai government did mention the new deaths reporting policy during at least one local briefing early in the month. But the change has gone unmentioned in most local news reports in recent days, with those reports citing the rapidly declining daily COVID death numbers reported by the government, but typically giving no explanation of why they had suddenly started declining.

 

Various news reports also continue to draw before to now comparisons between the higher daily death tolls prior to May 1 versus the now lower ones (without mentioning the new, more narrow deaths reporting method), giving the misimpression the declines were mainly due to an improving COVID situation in the country.

 

At least in its English language communications, the Thai government thus far doesn’t appear to have publicly and clearly defined just how it’s now distinguishing between deaths “from” COVID versus deaths “with” COVID. Although earlier in the spring, Ministry of Public Health officials began talking publicly about only counting COVID deaths involving serious lung inflammation and/or respiratory system failure.

 

At that time, MoPH said perhaps 10-30 percent of Thailand’s officially reported COVID deaths had the virus as only an incidental factor. But when the MoPH began separating out the types of COVID deaths in the past week in preparation for its new policy, they were cutting the official COVID death counts by about half, removing 60+ deaths per day that were deemed only “with” COVID.

 

Different countries have different criteria for how and when they count and report official COVID deaths. But various research studies, including those that looked at Thailand under its prior death counting rules, had found that actual deaths caused by COVID were likely significantly higher than even the original numbers.

 

The latest episode also isn’t the only example of Thailand taking actions that end up minimizing its official COVID statistics reporting. To start with, Thailand has a relatively low per capita rate of lab-based RT-PCR testing for COVID cases, which is the basis for Thailand's official daily counts, compared to other countries.

 

 

Source link

 

Then on top of that, the government in recent months has increasingly encouraged a shift to less expensive ATK tests, which citizens can do on their own, don’t necessarily ever get officially reported, and aren’t counted in Thailand’s tally of “official” COVID cases even if they are officially reported.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

 

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/554503142834681

 

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106142991004034/551797299771932/?type=3

 

 

[ThailandRyan]

15 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Thailand Narrows Method of Counting Daily COVID Deaths, Leading to Sudden Decline in Official Death Statistics

 

[English translation above added] Source Link

 

 

With Thailand anxious to reinvigorate its COVID battered tourism industry and broader economy, the local COVID news headlines and government reporting during the past week must have seemed like a kind of salvation – daily COVID deaths declining markedly, as much as 40 percent in just a matter of days.

 

The casual news follower might easily assume it’s a good sign reflecting the COVID situation in Thailand getting better, or perhaps medical treatments and new drugs now two-plus years into the pandemic during a better job of keeping COVID patients alive, especially during the current Omicron variant wave.

 

But in fact, Thailand’s rapidly falling official daily COVID death numbers in recent days aren’t primarily related to either of those factors, but instead, to the Thai government very quietly changing and narrowing what it counts and reports as official daily COVID deaths starting May 1.

 

The change is reflected in a tiny footnote added to the Ministry of Public Health’s daily COVID death reports starting May 1, where it noted that from now on, only deaths that the government considers to be “from” COVID will be tallied and officially reported, meaning those deemed to have died “with” COVID, which have been counted for the past two-plus years, will no longer be reported.

 

The effect of the policy change has been stark: Thailand tied its year-high number of official COVID deaths on April 29 with 129 under the old policy, followed by 126 on April 30. But then when the new counting policy took effect on May 1, the daily official COVID deaths count fell to 91 on May 1, 84 on May 2, and finally 77 on May 3 – a 40 percent decline from the yearly high in just the span of four days.

 

The change in how Thailand counts its COVID deaths comes just after the government had ominously predicted that official COVID deaths could hit up to 250 per day in the wake of the mid-April Songkran New Year’s holidays. And it comes amid the government attempting to relax current COVID restrictions along with possibly downgrading the country’s COVID outbreak to “endemic” status provided key statistics continue to improve in the coming months.

 

The Thai government did mention the new deaths reporting policy during at least one local briefing early in the month. But the change has gone unmentioned in most local news reports in recent days, with those reports citing the rapidly declining daily COVID death numbers reported by the government, but typically giving no explanation of why they had suddenly started declining.

 

Various news reports also continue to draw before to now comparisons between the higher daily death tolls prior to May 1 versus the now lower ones (without mentioning the new, more narrow deaths reporting method), giving the misimpression the declines were mainly due to an improving COVID situation in the country.

 

At least in its English language communications, the Thai government thus far doesn’t appear to have publicly and clearly defined just how it’s now distinguishing between deaths “from” COVID versus deaths “with” COVID. Although earlier in the spring, Ministry of Public Health officials began talking publicly about only counting COVID deaths involving serious lung inflammation and/or respiratory system failure.

 

At that time, MoPH said perhaps 10-30 percent of Thailand’s officially reported COVID deaths had the virus as only an incidental factor. But when the MoPH began separating out the types of COVID deaths in the past week in preparation for its new policy, they were cutting the official COVID death counts by about half, removing 60+ deaths per day that were deemed only “with” COVID.

 

Different countries have different criteria for how and when they count and report official COVID deaths. But various research studies, including those that looked at Thailand under its prior death counting rules, had found that actual deaths caused by COVID were likely significantly higher than even the original numbers.

 

The latest episode also isn’t the only example of Thailand taking actions that end up minimizing its official COVID statistics reporting. To start with, Thailand has a relatively low per capita rate of lab-based RT-PCR testing for COVID cases, which is the basis for Thailand's official daily counts, compared to other countries.

 

 

Source link

 

Then on top of that, the government in recent months has increasingly encouraged a shift to less expensive ATK tests, which citizens can do on their own, don’t necessarily ever get officially reported, and aren’t counted in Thailand’s tally of “official” COVID cases even if they are officially reported.

 

They had indicated around March that this was how they would be counting the deaths.  Why did it take them until just recently to start this or did they start this back then?  I am a little confused.

 

So I thought that they were already doing this (from the above @TallGuyJohninBKK post): 

"The change is reflected in a tiny footnote added to the Ministry of Public Health’s daily COVID death reports starting May 1, where it noted that from now on, only deaths that the government considers to be “from” COVID will be tallied and officially reported, meaning those deemed to have died “with” COVID, which have been counted for the past two-plus years, will no longer be reported"

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

28 minutes ago, ThailandRyan said:

They had indicated around March that this was how they would be counting the deaths.  Why did it take them until just recently to start this or did they start this back then?  I am a little confused.

 

So I thought that they were already doing this (from the above @TallGuyJohninBKK post): 

"The change is reflected in a tiny footnote added to the Ministry of Public Health’s daily COVID death reports starting May 1, where it noted that from now on, only deaths that the government considers to be “from” COVID will be tallied and officially reported, meaning those deemed to have died “with” COVID, which have been counted for the past two-plus years, will no longer be reported"

 

No, they weren't doing that before, at least not completely, until starting May 1, as their graphic indicates.

 

Another reinforcement of that is a trio of alternate daily death reports they issued for last three days of April, kind of like a warmup for the new counting method.

 

See the April 30 alternate deaths report below where they begin to separate out the "from" vs the "with" deaths -- even though the official death tallies for those three days still counted the combined total of both. That then changed starting May 1.

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106142991004034/551797299771932/?type=3

 

Whether they had been taking any other measures behind the scenes since those original March reports to curtail the official death reporting, we have no way of knowing.

 

Also, the Bangkok Post had one daily news report on May 2 that mentioned the change in deaths counting policy as of May 1... But apart from that, all their other daily reporting since then that I could find has made no mention of the policy change or how it's affected the daily death reports.

 

The effect of the policy change in counting COVID deaths is to make it impossible to make any legitimate future comparisons of daily official COVID deaths from now on versus those from the past, which were counted in an entirely different way.

 

[Bkk Brian]

PCR test positive cases, total of 9,288 official new infections. 82 official covid deaths recorded.

 

Rapid tests positive cases, 10,141 bringing the total of PCR and ATK results to 19,429

https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/

 

OWD rolling 7 day average, cases and deaths up to 2nd May

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/thailand

 

 

 

[edwinchester]

Some may suspect that changing the way deaths and cases are counted on May 1st was planned to avoid an anticipated dramatic increase in cases due to the lowering of restrictions during Songkran. I couldn't possibly comment.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Different people can debate what should or should not get counted as an official COVID death, and what criteria to use.

 

But, either way,  I find it somewhat curious that they finally decided to very quietly make the change to effectively narrow and reduce their official COVID death counts now 2-1/2 years into the pandemic, just as they're trying somewhat to revive tourism and downgrade COVID to "endemic" status.

 

The timing connections are intriguing, to say the least.

 

One of their stated criteria for getting to "endemic" status is to have daily COVID deaths not exceed 0.10% of the current number of hospitalized COVID patients.

 

Right now, with about 32,000 COVID cases hospitalized nationwide and declining almost daily, that translates into a daily COVID deaths target right now not exceeding the low 30s.

 

With the May 1 policy change on what to call an "official" COVID death, they overnight got substantially closer to their "endemic" COVID deaths target.

 

[dinsdale]

I think changing the the way deaths are counted is ligitimate. Omicron is so widespread that incidental infections found amongst those admitted to hospital for other serious health matters resulting in death or those dying at home having Omicron would be a large %. An age breakdown would also be nice. Many old people die from complications from common colds and I assume the same would be the case with Omicron. This may well continue for years so it's time to move on. Open up, drop the masks (sick people should wear masks to protect others which is standard practice in Japan) and accept this for what it is. Endemic. When it comes to deaths from Delta IMO it's the opposite. Died from not with and was undercounted.

[webfact]

[mommysboy]

4 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Different people can debate what should or should not get counted as an official COVID death, and what criteria to use.

 

But, either way,  I find it somewhat curious that they finally decided to very quietly make the change to effectively narrow and reduce their official COVID death counts now 2-1/2 years into the pandemic, just as they're trying somewhat to revive tourism and downgrade COVID to "endemic" status.

 

The timing connections are intriguing, to say the least.

 

One of their stated criteria for getting to "endemic" status is to have daily COVID deaths not exceed 0.10% of the current number of hospitalized COVID patients.

 

Right now, with about 32,000 COVID cases hospitalized nationwide and declining almost daily, that translates into a daily COVID deaths target right now not exceeding the low 30s.

 

With the May 1 policy change on what to call an "official" COVID death, they overnight got substantially closer to their "endemic" COVID deaths target.

 

I agree and disagree.

 

Undoubtedly, there is some political spin at play.  And we saw this with the way road fatalities were counted, and with their air quality calculations. It muddies the waters to say the least.

 

Nevertheless, a lot of countries started to differentiate 'from' and 'with', and I think one major reason is because that's the way it is simply the way it is.  It's happened recently because Omicron is a different beast from Delta.  With the latter, even a fit and healthy person could die of it alone, but that is much less the case with the latter, where the primary reasons are far more likely to be  severe underlying comorbidities.

 

One last point: imagine if flu deaths were counted using the same formula as covid19- we'd have pretty much the same figures imo.

 

 

 

[mrfill]

Would it be so difficult to publish both figures? 

[ukrules]

It's nonsense and it's always been nonsense, I'm not even bothering to read these in any detail any more

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, mrfill said:

Would it be so difficult to publish both figures? 

That's  what I think they could and should have done -- just like the alternate deaths report format that they used for the last three days of April, as I posted above.

 

But, I suspect, if they had done that, various outlets that report their data to the public probably would have continued to also report the total combined figure for deaths "from" and "with".  And that may not have suited the government's wishes and objectives here.

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

7 hours ago, dinsdale said:

I think changing the the way deaths are counted is ligitimate.

As I said above, people can and will debate that....

 

But what I found most objectionable in all this is how the quiet policy change has ended up misleading the general public on what's going on with COVID deaths in Thailand lately.

 

If you look at the various news reporting in the past week, it's been about how great it is that COVID deaths and cases are really declining. But almost none of those news reports actually explain that the main reason official deaths are falling is because the government simply changed its counting rules.

 

Now why is that?  Is it because the government made its counting change in such a quiet way that the media for the most part didn't notice?  Or that the local media is just so sloppy that they don't pay attention to the details of what they're reporting, and just parrot whatever the government says... Or some combination of both?

 

Either way, the general public ends up getting misled on recent COVID death reporting and the supposed decline on COVID deaths. And that, I think, is wrong.

 

[dinsdale]

16 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

As I said above, people can and will debate that....

 

But what I found most objectionable in all this is how the quiet policy change has ended up misleading the general public on what's going on with COVID deaths in Thailand lately.

 

If you look at the various news reporting in the past week, it's been about how great it is that COVID deaths and cases are really declining. But almost none of those news reports actually explain that the main reason official deaths are falling is because the government simply changed its counting rules.

 

Now why is that?  Is it because the government made its counting change in such a quiet way that the media for the most part didn't notice?  Or that the local media is just so sloppy that they don't pay attention to the details of what they're reporting, and just parrot whatever the government says... Or some combination of both?

 

Either way, the general public ends up getting misled on recent COVID death reporting and the supposed decline on COVID deaths. And that, I think, is wrong.

 

I wasn't disputing that and agree with you 100%. I wonder how many other times it's been changed and gone fully unnoticed.

[webfact]

COVID-19 - May 5: Thailand reports 9,790 new coronavirus cases, 17,109 recoveries, 54 deaths

 

file photo

 

Thailand on Thursday (May 5) reported 9,790 new COVID-19 cases, 17,109 recoveries and 54 additional deaths over the past 24 hours. 

 

Full story: https://aseannow.com/topic/1258718-covid-19-may-5-thailand-reports-9790-new-coronavirus-cases-17109-recoveries-54-deaths/

 

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/Admin