INFECTION CONTROL MEASURES OF COVID-19 IN THAILAND: ONE YEAR EXPERIENCE

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recent disease cause by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. COVID-19 epidemic first appeared in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has since become a global pandemic by the first half of 2020. The first local transmission in Thailand began in late January 2020, four weeks after discovering the first case of COVID-19 in a Chinese traveler from Wuhan, with the first wave of the epidemic occurring from March to April of the same year. Here, we summarize data on number of COVID-19 cases within the country, including those placed under a mandatory two-week state quarantine. We discuss how Thailand overcame the first COVID-19 pandemic, which employed preventive measures, public health policies, travel restrictions, and planning for eventual vaccination. A key factor was strict COVID-19 prevention measures, which included mask wearing, social distancing, state quarantine, working from home policy, smartphone tracking applications, nationwide curfew, lockdown, and restricted entry into the country. However, these measures came with social and economic costs, viz mental (stress) and social health problems (job loss, financial problem and suicide) among people with or suspected of COVID-19. Although Thailand successfully ended the first wave of COVID-19 outbreak by mid-2020, a new epidemic wave originating from Samut Sakhon Province in late December 2020 has posed a new challenge. The experiences from the previous outbreak was an informative result to adapt it for encounter the new wave outbreak in the future.