A record daily Covid-19 death toll of 57 and 5,533 new cases were reported over the past 24 hours, the Public Health Ministry said on Thursday morning.
The second-highest daily fatalities were at 53 on Wednesday, when the country logged 4,786 new infections.
Of the 5,533 cases reported on Thursday, 99%, or 5,489, or were in the general population while 44 were among prison inmates.
Over the past 24 hours, 3,223 Covid-19 patients recovered and were discharged from hospitals.
Since April 1, when the third wave of Covid-19 began, there have been 235,971 Covid-19 patients, 183,276 of whom have recovered.
Since the pandemic started early last year, there have been 264,834 Covid-19 cases, 210,702 of whom recovered.
The death toll was at 1,986 in the third wave and 2,080 from the beginning of the pandemic early last year.
Apisamai Srirangson, spokeswoman for the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration, said in the afternoon briefing that the 57 new fatalities were 30-94 years old and 65% of them were aged 60 or more.
Fifty-four of them were Thais and the rest were Cambodian, Pakistani and Indian nationals.
Forty-one new fatalities had hypertension while three had no underlying diseases. Twenty contracted Covid-19 from family members.
Bangkok had the most new fatalities at 34. Nine others were in Samut Prakan, three in Pathum Thani, two each in Nakhon Pathom and Nakhon Nayok and one each in Chiang Rai, Chaiyaphum, Songkhla, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Narathiwat, Samut Sakhon and Suphan Buri.
The 5,533 new Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours included 5,477 local infections and 12 imported cases.
Among the local infections, 3,788 were confirmed at hospitals and 1,689 via mass testing.
Bangkok logged the most cases, at a record 1,960 from the previous high of 1,826 on Tuesday. Trailing the capital was Samut Prakan (435), Pathum Thani (321), Samut Sakhon (298), Songkhla (272), Chon Buri (261), Nakhon Pathom (231), Nonthaburi (224), Pattani (180) and Yala (136).
Nakhon Pathom had a new cluster of 104 cases at a chicken factory in Don Tum district.
Sa Kaeo had a new cluster of 11 cases at a technical college in Wang Nam Yen district. They were linked to the vocational students who were trainees at factories, Dr Apisamai said.
The 12 imported cases were from nine from Cambodia, including seven who had entered illegally, two illegal Myanmar entrants and a Thai returnee from the Maldives (1).
On Wednesday, there were 52,052 in-patients, including 1,971 who were critically ill and 566 dependent on ventilators.
“The numbers of critically ill patients and those dependent on ventilators are rising. This raises concerns,” Dr Apisamai said.
Global Covid-19 cases rose by 389,637 in 24 hours to 182.97 million. The worldwide death toll went up by 8,482 to 3.96 million. The United States had the most cases at 34.54 million, up 14,197, and the most deaths at 620,249, up 249.
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