Not enough hospital beds
PHUKET GOVERNOR NARONG Woonciew has called on local officials to push the home isolation “treatment at home” policy for handling new COVID-19 infections as the Phuket health chief remains adamant that there are not enough hospital beds on the island to cope with the rising number of infections.
Governor Narong made the policy clear at a special meeting held at the new Phuket Provincial Hall last Sunday (Jan 9).
The focus is to be on organising treatment at home, in hotel accommodation or in “community isolation” centres in order to support hospitals in the treatment of “Yellow” and “Red” patients and to ensure the rising number of cases does not affect the treatment of other patients, Governor Narong said.
Dr Kusak Kukiattikoon, Chief of the Phuket Provincial Public Health Office (PPHO), said that Phuket does not have enough hospital beds to cope with the rising number of infections and that the infection rate was likely to increase significantly.
“The number of infected people in the group of foreign travelers has been continuously increasing, both in the form of Test & Go and Phuket Sandbox, as well as increasing in the number of infections in provincial areas,” he said.
“The infected persons were mostly in close contact with confirmed cases, attending joint activities or work in close contact with tourists or at tourist attractions,” he added.
“And there is a link to rising infections in the Test & Go group… Omicron has been found to be 66.3% of infections,” he said.
“The occupancy rate of patient beds has increased considerably. There is an insufficient number of beds to support the number of patients, but the mortality rate has decreased,” he added.
“The local quarantine rooms for the quarantine of high-risk contacts have become inadequate,” Dr Kusak added.
The PPHO daily COVID report for Monday (Jan 10) marked 468 new local infections of COVID-19, bringing the total local infections for the previous seven days to 2,421.
The report marked two ‘Red’ patients, 404 ‘Yellow’ patients and 175 ‘Green’ patients in care.
A further 712 people were at ‘hospitels’, and 289 were in “Community Isolation“, which includes self-quarantining at home.
The report for Jan 10 also marked that of 2,536 hospital beds in total available, 1,582 were occupied (62.38%) Phuket officials have yet to report a single COVID death this month.