100,000 proactive Covid-19 tests planned by June-end

[webfact]

100,000 proactive Covid-19 tests planned by June-end

By The Nation

 

 

The Department of Medical Sciences plans at least 100,000 tests by June-end as a proactive move to find Covid-19 cases.

 

Dr Opas Karnkawinpong, director-general of the department which operates under the Ministry of Public Health, said that laboratory analysis would be divided into three groups: suspected cases, close contact with the infected, and proactive inspection of at least 100,000 samples within June.

 

Some have already been implemented in many provinces such as Nakhon Ratchasima, Surat Thani, Pattani and others. The process is not expected to take long because it will be done at the same time involving aboratories from all over the country, which will help create a database to catch outbreak signals, he said.

 

The proactive search will assess two groups: at-risk people who have to work with a large number of people or work in public places with the opportunity to meet more patients, such as health personnel, public vehicle drivers, etc, and crowded places where social distancing is hard to implement, such as workers who are crowded in a certain area or inmate groups.

 

An important mechanism for proactive search is the provincial communicable disease committee headed by the governor. The central office will issue instructions on which groups to check based on inputs about which groups are at risk.

 

Thailand has tested more than 400,000 samples, enabling control of the epidemic, Dr Opas said.

 

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30388720

 

-- © Copyright The Nation Thailand 2020-05-29

 

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[ukrules]

Why no mention of a serological survey?

[DrTuner]

Good, but: release the names of the reference labs and the statistics of their daily number of tests conducted. Only then can there be any legitimacy to the "Confirmed" numbers touted in the daily press releases. Also, release the same stats for other laboratories. With the number of positives, of course.

[DrTuner]

16 minutes ago, ukrules said:

Why no mention of a serological survey?

I remember seeing the quick tests were 300-400b each. A quick study for 100,000 would cost a mere 40M baht, basically nothing. It would give some insight into the question, how prevalent could the initial strains of SARS-CoV-2 have been in Thailand between November-February.

[ukrules]

3 hours ago, DrTuner said:

I remember seeing the quick tests were 300-400b each. A quick study for 100,000 would cost a mere 40M baht, basically nothing. It would give some insight into the question, how prevalent could the initial strains of SARS-CoV-2 have been in Thailand between November-February.

Yes, it would be good to see if it flew under the radar for a long time prior to its discovery.

 

For all we know it may have evaded detection completely for a long time before mutating into its current (more dangerous?) form.

 

[Bender Rodriguez]

if anyone is reading this post:   add VITAMIN D test ... 

 

yeah, as if ...

 

maybe they could figure out why thailand, with lots of sun, had very little death

[Letseng]

On 5/29/2020 at 12:49 PM, DrTuner said:

I remember seeing the quick tests were 300-400b each. A quick study for 100,000 would cost a mere 40M baht, basically nothing. It would give some insight into the question, how prevalent could the initial strains of SARS-CoV-2 have been in Thailand between November-February.

Are there reliable "quick tests" yet?

How quick are they?

Btw, countries which require negative result for entry do not accept anything less than a PCR test because of reliability.

 

[Letseng]

9 hours ago, Bender Rodriguez said:

if anyone is reading this post:   add VITAMIN D test ... 

 

yeah, as if ...

 

maybe they could figure out why thailand, with lots of sun, had very little death

It was found that one of Italy's problems was low vit D in people while Norway where food is vit. D improved and ppl take supplements, vit. D levels were higher. Vit. D should not just be taken uncontrolled.