BANGKOK — A senior health official on Wednesday dismissed reports put forth by the opposition that the country’s track record of zero domestic coronavirus infections has been broken.
Deputy health minister Satit Pitutacha said no new transmission has been discovered, despite Seri Ruam Thai MP Rewat Wisutwet’s claim at today’s parliament session that someone in Rayong province caught the coronavirus from an Egyptian airman who tested positive for the virus.
“I’d like to declare that a new wave of domestic infections has begun in Rayong today,” Rewat said at the meeting. “We were able to keep our zero record of infections for so long, but it turned out today that a Thai contacted the imported disease.”
Satit said he’d look into the matter, and later wrote online, “Let me say once again that there’s currently no Thai had contacted the virus. It’s just a rumor.”
Rewat later backed off from his claim and blamed the exchange on a “misunderstanding.”
In today’s briefings, the coronavirus response center said five new coronavirus patients were reported, all of them held inside state quarantine.
They were identified as a Thai woman returning from the U.S., two Thai men returning from Singapore, and a Thai man and woman returning from the United Arab Emirates.
The country’s cumulative cases of infection stands at 3,232 as of today.
