Link to article: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/thailand-reports-daily-record-1335-new-coronavirus-cases-2021-04-14/
Thailand has a new serge of Covid- 19 cases with the largest number of new cases in one day with a total of 1,335 cases making the third record rise this week alone. The spike follows the Songkran new year holidays, and the Thais are being urged to avoid unnecessary travel and reduce gatherings to help curb the outbreak. The outbreak includes the extremely contagious B.1.1.7 variant from Britain. Health officials urged people to stay home in fear of the outbreak reaching numbers as high as 10,000 to 20,000 per day. To help curb the spread, shopping malls will reduce their hours to encourage people to stay at home. Up to now Thailand had managed Covid well keeping the number of cases to 35,910 and deaths to 97. Thailand will be giving out one million doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine this month in addition to the 2 million doses already given. Thailand has only vaccinated .4% of their population. Their goal it to starts its main vaccination drive this June.
People need to understand that Covid is not going to go away overnight and that they need to take caution when in public or visiting family. We need to help get people vaccinated around the globe to stop the spread and the risk of variants from forming. Masking and limiting contact with others remain the best way to stop the spread. We also need to help other countries get vaccines that work. There has been much controversy with the Chinese vaccines and while Thailand is doing the right thing by vaccinating its population, the vaccine it is using is not extremely effective. The United States needs to help countries get the better vaccines.
Covid is a world health crisis. Countries like the United States need to help the smaller countries get vaccinations to help stop the spread. While we should not give away our intellectual property with our vaccines, the United States does need to more to get more vaccinations out and around the globe so that we are not back where we started last spring. The larger countries need to take care of the smaller countries in this time of crisis.