July 9, 2021 Thai Enquirer Summary COVID-19 News Once again Thailand recorded yet another day of record infection and the numbers are heading for 10,000 Total New Infections = 9,376 Community Infection = 8,998 Prison Infection = 278 Total New Death = 72 Total New Discharged = 3,928 Total Infection for same number of days (for comparison) July June May Total Infection = 58,205 25,436 18,222 Total Death = 511 301 196 As a way to control the spiralling out of control situation 2014 coup leader – general Prayut Chan-o-cha is set to make a call on putting ‘quasi lockdown’ in highly infected areas. Prayut comes out to say on his Facebook that he is monitoring the situation and there is a need to tighten the rules to not move and close many venues in order to stop the rising infection rates. General Prayut, who chairs the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA), has called an urgent meeting of the CCSA to consider the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH)’s proposal to elevate COVID-19 restriction measures in high-risk zones including Bangkok and 5 adjacent provinces for 14 days following daily surges of new infections. Included in the new restrictions proposed by the MoPH are: A night-time curfew between 22:.00 hrs and 04.00 hrs to confine the movement of residents to their homes. A curb on inter-provincial travel as well as closing non-essential venues and areas that attract crowds. Increasing work-from-home (WFH) to 100% to limit people’s travel from their home, except worked related to essential services and critical infrastructure. This is for both the private and public sector. Supermarkets and other daily locales will be left open but department stores may be shut for 14-days. Apart from this to cope with the surge in new infections in Bangkok, new measures will be implemented as follows Stepping up active case detection. Setting up new walk-in testing centres Establishing 20 community isolation centers Cooperating with private hospitals to support home isolation Speeding up vaccinations for high-risk groups and construction workers Bangkok now has 121 clusters, 2,212 new cases and 33 deaths in the past 24 hours. The Department of Health posed the question “Are you ready for lockdown?” on its Facebook page on Thursday, triggering a flood of comments from members of the public. Thais call for relief aid, more jabs ahead of new lockdown. As of 3pm, the post had received 1,400 likes, 478 comments and 1,900 shares. The majority of commenters said they were ready for lockdown but added the government must launch Covid-19 relief measures and speed up the vaccination drive. Meanwhile, the hashtag #ล็อกดาวน์ (“Lockdown) became the top Twitter trend on Thursday, after the Public Health Ministry proposed a 14-day semi-lockdown in high-risk zones. To prepare for a possible lockdown, people in Greater Bangkok rushed to supermarkets yesterday to stock up on food and basic necessities. The pandemic-driven shopping mania were witnessed yesterday as people prepared ahead of a possible lockdown to keep people at home. Local authorities have imposed a night curfew on migrant workers in Mae Sot district, and asked Thais to also stay home, in a bid to control the spread of Covid-19. The provincial communicable disease committee, chaired by governor Pongrat Pirom, on Wednesday agreed on an 8pm-4am curfew curfew for migrant workers in Mae Sot and asked Thai residents to stay home from 11pm-4am. The committee also ordered clinics and drug stores to send all customers with a fever, cough and sore throat for Covid-19 tests. Drinking alcohol is banned at eateries, but customers can dine-in until 8pm. Shopping centres can stay open until 9pm. As the testing continues to remain a big issue due to the limitations of PCR tests, the government has given a go ahead for rapid tests at hospitals. Currently it takes about 2-3 days to get PCR results. The situation is so severe that people are bracing the rain to wait to get tested and yet many are being turned away. Even the drive-thru tests are witnessing long lines. This is the picture from Bangpakok- Rangsit 2 hospital which only accepts 200 tests per day. The severity of the situation is so much that social media postings shows parking lots turning into hospital care centers. Although the authenticity of these pictures are verified but it is surely in Thailand. Once again, the situation in the hospitals continue to deteriorate with intensive care units (ICU) beds and ventilators getting harder to get. As of yesterday 2,564 people were in ICU and 698 on ventilators. The inoculation drive did pick up yesterday but still remained at 291,575 doses/day while the need for reaching the 100 million doses to 50 million people by the end of this year has reached 500,000 doses per day for each day remaining in 2021. The 291,575 doses administered yesterday was the among the 3rd highest in July Total inoculation throughout Thailand since the 1st day of inoculation started on February 28th 2021 stands at 11.61 million and since the hyped up June 7th launch of nationwide inoculation drive is at 7.5 million doses. 1st Dose = 8,494,230 2nd Dose = 3,125,388 Meanwhile Singapore which does not count those inoculated with SinoVac in their count, Thailand continues to count the more than 6.7 million doses inoculation using SinoVac among those who have been inoculated. Data as of July 7, 2021 SinoVac - 6,744,401 doses AstraZeneca - 4,713,963 doses SinoPharm - 161,254 doses Bangkok remains the epicentre of the infection in the what many are starting to call as the 4th wave (although the country has yet to emerge from the 3rd wave) Political News The approval rating of coup-leader and Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha witnessed a decline in support amid the worsening COVID-19 outbreak and economic hardships according to a survey conducted by local Thai newspaper Thai Rath which polled its millions of Thai followers on social media with the question: Do you still trust the government of Prayut Chan-o-cha? 1.8% said they still have trust in the Prayut government while 87.3% said they never have any trust in the government and 10.9% said they no longer trust the government. On Thailand’s worst Covid-19 day so far, #ประยุทธ์ออกไป (#PrayutGetOut) was trending again, with netizens expressing frustration and anger with Gen Prayut, and demanding his resignation. Even the likes of billionaire family (owner of Singha Beer) whose daughter was a key leader of the anti-Yingluck Shinawatra protest led by Suthep Thaugsuban has come out to weigh in on this polling when she said – “I do not. I stopped believing in them more than two years ago.” So strong is the anti-Prayut sentiment that a petition to file a case against the mismanagement of the governance by Prayut that it received more than 100,000 signatures within 24-hours of it being launched. Thai Sang Thai (Build Thai) Party’s signature campaign to sue the government amid a spike of infections and fatalities due to the government’s inability to bring the 3rd wave of the outbreak under control is gathering steam. The party has managed to gather 100,000 signatures at 19.29 hrs yesterday. In its signature campaign called #Sue the murdered government#, the Build Thai Party called for the public to sign up in support of its campaign to take legal action against the Prayut Chan-o-cha cabinet after the cabinet gave the green light to purchase another 10.9 million more doses of the Sinovac jab at a cost of 6.1 billion baht despite the fact that the Sinovac vaccine is not effective against the highly contagious Delta variant. Dr Prawase Wasi, an advisor to the Thailand National Health Foundation, has come out to revive the idea of a provisional government to address the current outbreak crisis. Dr Prawase said the current outbreak crisis, deemed a national crisis, is a big lesson for Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha to learn from and come to realisation that sweeping powers, the political system with an inefficient parliament and nepotism, conflicts of interest and vested interests under his rule caused his government to be a weak government. Dr Prawase then revived the idea of a provision government that is independent and highly effective to be installed for 1-2 years to tackle the country’s ongoing crises under a new political dimension. The Supreme Court yesterday ordered leader of the United front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) leader Jatuporn Promphan back to jail for another 11 months and 16 days, in the defamation lawsuit brought against him by former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in 2009. Jatuporn was faced with two different lawsuits, related to two speeches he gave during political demonstrations in 2009 and 2012. The courts found Jatuporn guilty of defamation of Abhisit in both cases and sentenced him to 12 months in prison on each conviction. The Supreme Court issued an order to count his conviction from the previous case and he now has 11 months and 16 days left to serve, says Jatuporn’s lawyer Winyat Chartmontri, adding that he will try to appeal the decision. The parliament gave the green light to 6 urgent motions submitted by opposition and government MPs to the government for consideration, according to Deputy House Speaker Supachai Phosu.