Health officials deny claim

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From Coconuts Bangkok

COVID not spreading undetected, task force says, vowing vigilance

Health officials today denied that the failure to detect new locally transmitted coronavirus infections means they aren’t trying hard enough.

While announcing that the day’s only new case came from overseas, the outbreak task force said its limited testing that targets “likely” populations; such as medical workers, state officials and new prisoners; had come back negative in the last 32,500 people tested.

“The ministry is on task to test 100,000 people classified in risky groups and areas, which began two weeks ago. So far over 32,000 people, or 32.56%, have been tested, and we haven’t found a positive case,” spokesperson Taweesilp Wisanuyothin said.

Testing has never been widespread and officials have balked at the expense of expanding it outside of the narrow approach which they have given the muscular name “active case finding.” As segments of society reopen and public spaces fill again, “second wave” anxieties persist.

That led to some skepticism after all of the new cases logged in the past couple weeks were only found in Thais returning from abroad. 

Today, it was a 32-year-old student back from Saudi Arabia, along with the report of one additional death.

The student was diagnosed with the virus yesterday at a government quarantine facility in the southern province of Songkhla. She brought the number of known infections to 3,083 since January. 

The outbreak’s 58th domestic victim was an 80-year-old Thai Muslim infected along with hundreds of others at a religious gathering three months ago in Kuala Lumpur.

Asked whether Songkran will happen in July after being postponed from April due to the outbreak, the spokesman played down expectations and said nothing would be official until at least Friday.

“When I was asked yesterday if the Songkran holidays would be this July, what I said was if we do good today, it will predict our future,” Taweesilp said. “It will depend on the prime minister, so I can’t answer that”

 

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From Thai Examiner

Thailand begins herd immunity study

Herd immunity study by Chulalongkorn University on a village in the Thung Yang Daeng district of southern Pattani. It comes, as around the world, people are beginning to question the response of governments and the huge economic loss caused by lockdown measures. Sweden’s singular approach has emerged as a source of increasing controversy while the role of the media and society itself is also in the spotlight.

Thailand’s authorities have fared well in protecting the country against the Covid 19 virus but it is not yet clear how the kingdom will return to complete normality. The answer will be herd immunity whether this is achieved through a vaccine or by natural means. On Monday, it was revealed that Chulalongkorn University has commenced a herd immunity study centred on a small village in Pattani. This comes as the controversial approach taken by Sweden, which did not shut down its economy, begins to draw more strident critics and supporters as the world begins to weigh up whether it got it right or wrong in its reaction to this global pandemic.

Even as Thailand is making impressive strides towards the development of the kingdom’s own vaccine against the Covid 19 virus with testing currently underway on monkeys, it is also pursuing another initiative based on the herd immunity theory.

Details emerged on Monday of a small community-based study in a Pattani village located in the Thung Yang Daeng district in the southern part of the Muslim majority province.

The important research is being led by Dr Wiput Phoolcharaen of Chulalongkorn University and is being called the ‘Pattani Model’ among those familiar with the project. 

The village being tested has a population of 1,070 people. Dr Wiput, on Monday, described it as the perfect sample site for his scientific study.

 

[DivineMadman]

FYI re Herd Immunity.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/28/upshot/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html

 

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From Reuters

Thailand's one million health volunteers hailed as coronavirus heroes

SALADANG, Thailand (Reuters) - Nearly every day, 77-year-old Surin Makradee goes door-to-door in her village in Thailand, visiting every home to check people’s temperatures in a routine repeated in communities across the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

He said volunteers helped create greater participation in the health systems in subsequent decades and won praise during previous epidemics like the H5N1 bird flu in the mid-2000s.

Their role, however, had become less prominent over the past 10 years - at least until the coronavirus emerged.

“I consider people in the village my family. If I don’t educate them, they will not understand the risk of getting infected,” Surin said in her village of Saladang in Ang Thong province, about 90 km (55 miles) north of Bangkok

She is a member of the Village Health Volunteers, a long-overlooked network of more than 1 million community workers dating back to a Cold War-era hearts-and-minds programme.

The volunteers have been praised by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “unsung heroes” in Thailand’s relatively successful efforts to fight the novel coronavirus.

“Thailand’s village health volunteers are unsung heroes working to support the prevention, detection and reporting of COVID-19,” said Daniel Kertesz, WHO representative for Thailand, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Apart from the temperature checks, the front-line health volunteers help the government collect daily health information and watch for flare-ups in infections.

Surin, who has been a volunteer for 38 years and does her rounds by motorcycle, said she is also responsible for monitoring people who have returned from other provinces and need to be in quarantine for 14 days.

Created in 1977, the Village Health Volunteers were set up as part of government efforts to help rural communities at a time when communists insurgents roamed through many parts of the country.

With basic health training, the volunteers help provide rudimentary care and initial diagnoses in areas that are often a long way from a clinic or hospital.

“They were gatekeepers for people in the community to get to medical treatment, and this was important considering the limited resources of our health system,” said Chatichai Muksong, a historian at Srinakharinwirot University.

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From Khaosod English

Doctor Who Founded Rural Health Volunteer Network Dies at 92

BANGKOK — The doctor who pioneered a nationwide volunteer network that looks after local communities’s health well-being died on Tuesday at 92.

Amorn Nonthasoot, a former health ministry perm-sec who established the program, known by Thai acronym Aor Sor Mor, died of gastrointestinal bleeding, Nakornping Hospital director Worachet Teacharak said. The network he founded is widely credited for containing the COVID-19 outbreak in Thailand.

Amorn dedicated much of his career to the development of the primary health care system in the country. Current health minister Anutin Charnvirakul posted a message of condolences for Amorn on Wednesday.

After his graduation from Harvard University in 1962, Amorn piloted a network of health reporters to communicate healthy practices to rural communities. The idea was expanded into the Aor Sor Mor in 1977.

The project has since grown to all regions nationwide. A total of 1.04 million volunteers have signed up to act as a middleman between rural residents and health officials, carrying out basic health outreach duties and more recently serving in the frontline against the coronavirus at community level.