COVID-19 pandemic: Thailand case

Two questions people make me frequently are ¿how is the culture in Thailand? and ¿what has Thailand done to control the spread of COVID-19?

I can answer these two questions in one answer:

Thailand has managed to control the COVID-19 outbreak thanks to its culture: greeting each other from a distance, entering houses barefoot, wearing masks (especially due to constant air pollution), to name just a few habits. These are customs that were already part of the daily life of the nationals.

Measures to control the outbreak

We see countries around the world entering total quarantine and, even so, the figures do not stop.

Interestingly, Thailand did not force anyone to stay at home and generally established a very soft curfew (from 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.), closed all entertainment venues, and simply recommended staying home, the teleworking, closed all its borders, applied the dry law, among other soft measures.

Situation in numbers

With these small but important measures and recommendations, the figures began to drop slowly until we achieved what we have today (see the date of publication of this article), the average number of new infected per day is from 1 to 10 people and the total is barely just over 3,000 confirmed infected and has not reached 60 deaths, to date.

Let's take into account that Thailand has a population of more than 60 million people and Thailand was one of the first countries to register infected people, so the figures mentioned above are quite low compared to other countries that took longer to reach.

We can verify this by visiting hospitals because they are not overloaded, the health system has not collapsed, the pandemic is apparently under control. However, Thailand has started to reopen its businesses, cautiously and slowly, but this could rebound the figures again as has happened in other countries.

What is coming now?

We do not know it, we just can wait for governments to make the best decision for their people and take all the necessary precautions.

The COVID-19 kills, this pandemic is a very serious issue that concerns us all. Remember, life comes first and must be above any economic or political interest.