BANGKOK: Thailand’s first death from the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus strain was recorded on Sunday, according to a health official (Jan 16).
The death of an 86-year-old woman from Songkhla, Thailand’s southern region, happened after Thailand’s first Omicron case was discovered last month, prompting the country’s mandatory COVID-19 quarantine for foreign visitors to be reinstated.
“The woman is a bedridden Alzheimer’s patient,” said Rungrueng Kitphati, a spokesman for the health ministry.
He claimed such a fatality was predicted because Thailand has documented over 10,000 Omicron cases so far, and that the country will not require any more containment measures.
On Sunday, Thailand reported 8,077 new infections and nine deaths, bringing the total number of cases to over 2.3 million and nearly 22,000 deaths since the epidemic began in 2020.
About 66 percent of the country’s estimated 72 million residents have received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine, but just 14.9% have received booster shots.
On January 11, the central bank predicted that Omicron would have a 0.3 percent impact on Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, but that it would be managed by the first half of the year.
