The intensive care unit (ICU) and inpatient department (IPD) beds at the Siriraj Piyamaharajkarun Hospital in Bangkok are completely occupied with COVID-19 patients, according to a Facebook post made on the hospital’s page yesterday (Friday).
In addition, the hospital acknowledged that there are still a number of COVID-19 patients in its emergency room who are awaiting transfer to other facilities and apologized to the public for the inconvenience.
The hospital’s announcement comes on the heels of a warning from Dr. Nitipat Jiarakul, head of the Division of Respiratory Diseases and Tuberculosis at the Faculty of Medicine at Siriraj Hospital. The COVID-19 is staging a comeback and that as many as 20,000–40,000 people are becoming infected every day, which is roughly 20 times more than the rate of infection in April.
Dr. Nitipat claims that admissions to hospitals have surged from 20 in April to roughly 400 per day, and that 5% of those admissions have lung infections, with half of them dying as a result.
In addition, the mortality toll increased 20 fold, going from 4 in April to around 66 each week presently.
The cause of death for half of those people was a COVID-19 infection, while the other half was a rise in comorbid conditions such kidney disease, emphysema, and heart disease.
However, the rate is steadily declining as the Omicron XBB.1.16 sub-variant is steadily rising, accounting for 15.1% of all infections, followed by 11.8% by the XBB.1.9.1 sub-variant and 6.1% by the XBB.1.9.2, according to a Facebook post made today by Dr. Thira Woratanarat of the Faculty of Medicine at Chulalongkorn University.
He revealed that because the majority of the 1,800 or so medical professionals who attended the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) meeting in April did not wear face masks, at least 180 of them were confirmed to be COVID-19 infected.
In a warning, the CDC advises attendees of the event in June to don their “own high-quality masks and, if possible, to also carry COVID-19 rapid antigen test kits with them.”
