Migrant cluster breaks Thai Covid winning streak - Asia Times
▻https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/migrant-cluster-breaks-thai-covid-winning-streak
Is the recent revelation of the largest daily number of Covid-19 infections in Thailand a full-blown outbreak, or a chance discovery of a malady that has been there for quite some time? That is the key question after more than 700 people living and working around a shrimp market in Mahachai in Samut Sakhon, a province southwest of the capital Bangkok, were found over the weekend to be Covid-19 positive.Either way, migrant workers, most of them from Myanmar, are at the center of the ruckus with cases being discovered even in Bangkok, from where people travel to Mahachai to buy shrimps and other seafood. That will only make their already precarious and marginalized situation in Thailand even more treacherous. Contrary to what some Thai newspapers have reported, this is not likely something they brought with them from Myanmar, where authorities have struggled to contain a spreading outbreak. There are rising concerns that Thai authorities may lurch to impose a new national lockdown, including over Bangkok, if numbers continue to climb in the days ahead.Thailand’s land borders with all its neighbors have been closed since March and the migrant workers in Mahachai went there long before any Covid-19 cases were discovered first in Wuhan, China and then in the rest of the region and the wider world.Since the first cases were discovered in Samut Sakhon in mid-December, Thailand’s highly efficient health authorities have carried out massive testing in the affected area and placed it under at least a partial lockdown.Since nearly all of those who have tested positive for the virus are asymptomatic or have very mild signs of the disease, it would have been hard to discover it earlier. Thai medical officials collect a nose swab sample to test for the Covid-19 at a seafood market in Samut Sakhon after some cases of local infections were detected and linked to a vendor at the market,
But the discovery of cases fits a pattern that has also been seen in many European capitals: migrants, newly arrived refugees and otherwise dispossessed people who live closely-packed together in ghetto-like conditions are among those hardest-hit by the pandemic. In those communities, where health services are likewise inadequate, it doesn’t take more than the arrival of a few infected people for any disease to spread like wildfire and then be out of control. While many Thais have gone to work in Europe, Taiwan, Israel, South Korea and other foreign countries, even larger numbers of workers from Thailand’s impoverished neighbors have come to the kingdom to look for jobs.
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