Thailand government called on people to follow prevention measures during the New Year holiday
More and more confirmed cases of Omicron variant of Covid-19 in Southeast Asian countries. Thailand, which has 11 confirmed cases of Omicron so far, calls on its people to strictly abide by the pandemic control and prevention measures to avoid an outbreak of Omicron infections after the New Year holiday.
The Bangkok Post quoted Dr Supakit Sirilak, the Director-General of the Medical Sciences Department, as saying, "I must admit that the Omicron variant seems to be more infectious than Delta." He also pointed out that the latest virological report showed that Omicron may lead to a breakthrough infection, but vaccination can help reduce the severity of infection. What’s more, some oral medicines such as Molnupiravir and Paxlovid, can also be used to treat Covid-19 infections caused by Omicron variant . However, he believed that the best way for people is to strictly abide by the pandemic control and prevention measures so as to reduce the possibility of being infected.
Officials of public health department warned that although the symptoms caused by Omicron were not too serious at present, no one knew what would happen if Omicron combined with the genome sequence of earlier Delta, Alpha or Beta variants.
So far, all the confirmed cases of Omicron in Thailand are found as international travelers. Although the first Omicron death happened in the UK on December 13, the Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said that the Thailand government has not yet decided whether to adjust the epidemic prevention policy during the coming New Year holiday.
Singapore and Malaysia have also confirmed cases of Omicron, and the other two Southeast Asian countries Cambodia and the Philippines have also confirmed the first Omicron case in the past two days.
A Cambodian pregnant women returning from Africa was diagnosed with Omicron variant
Cambodia's Ministry of Health reported on December 15 that a 23-year-old Cambodian woman who was 15 weeks pregnant was infected with Omicron variant. She transferred from Ghana, Africa to Bangkok, Thailand via Dubai. After waiting for 14 hours at Bangkok airport, she flew to Cambodia on the 12th. She is currently being treated in the hospital.
It’s reported in Cambodia that eight new cases were confirmed yesterday, which is the first time that the number of newly confirmed cases in a single day has decreased to less than ten since the outbreak of the third wave of infection in the country, and it is also the day with the least number of newly confirmed cases since February this year.
In Cambodia, nearly 89% of its 16 million people were vaccinated, making the country one of the highest vaccination rates among Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, the country reopened its borders to vaccinated international travelers last month.
However, in order to further consolidate the immune barrier, a spokesman of Cambodian Ministry of Health said that the fourth dose of Covid-19 vaccine will be vaccinated for the people of the country in 2022, and the interval between the third dose and the fourth dose is 6 months to 1 year. At the same time, the Cambodian government is considering launching the vaccination for 3-year-old children. The vaccination Committee and the Health Ministry of the country have carried out relevant work to plan and study the specific implementation steps.
The Philippine Ministry of Health said yesterday that there were two confirmed cases of Omicron in the country. It is reported that one of the confirmed patients came from Nigeria and entered Manila by plane on November 30. The other is a Filipino who returned from Japan on the 1st of this month. The authorities confirmed these two cases after 48 samples were genome sequenced on the December 14. The two patients are currently quarantined.
