SAMUT SAKHON — More than 900 people were found infected with the coronavirus in Samut Sakhon province, local officials said Monday.
Samut Sakhon Public Health Office said a total 914 new cases were discovered in the past 24 hours. A vast majority of them, 844, were registered during a case-finding operation. At least 795 of them are migrant workers, the statement said.
The latest surge brings the total number of confirmed cases in Samut Sakhon province to 6,555 since the new outbreak was first identified in December.
A health official answering the hotline for active case-finding operations in Samut Sakhon said that most of the new patients are workers in a factory, although she declined to name which one.
The coastal province remains one of the epicenters of the outbreak, along with the four eastern provinces of Chonburi, Trat, Rayong, and Chanthaburi.
The Samut Sakhon Governor himself has been infected with the coronavirus. Gov. Veerasak Vijitsaengsri remains in critical condition at Siriraj Hospital, where doctors recently found severe inflammation inside his lungs.
“The tracheotomy has made his care easier, since we can more easily remove phlegm. More air is going into his lungs,” Siriraj’s medicine faculty dean Prasit Watanapha told reporters.
Two new virus fatalities were reported in Thailand on Monday: a 61-year-old U.K. national who fell ill in a quarantine facility shortly after arriving in Thailand, and a 56-year-old Thai woman who reportedly contracted the virus from her husband, who worked at a seafood market in Samut Sakhon.
