Mae Sai, Thailand-
The Public Health Minister as well as the Tourism Minister will be personally visiting Chiang Rai and the Myanmar border area tomorrow to, in their words, boost public confidence.
The visit, scheduled for December 8th, 2020, is set to bring Anutin Charnvirakul, the Public Health Minister, and Phipat Ratchakitprakarn, the Tourism and Sports Minister, to Mae Sai on the border of Myanmar in Northern Thailand.
The visit follows multiple cases of Covid-19 traced domestically to Myanmar, primarily from a group of Thai women who fled entertainment venues in the area that suffered an outbreak of Covid-19 and snuck back into Thailand illegally, trying to avoid a mandatory fourteen day quarantine but inadvertently bringing the virus with them.
Thai officials have stressed the situation is under control and the visit by Anutin and Phipat is designed to restore public confidence. They plan to visit the border area directly, the Department of Disease Control in Mae Sai, a state quarantine center where returnees from Myanmar who legally returned the proper way are staying and a public market in Mae Sai.
Both Minister’s have stressed the North is safe and the testing and tracing work being done by the Thai government is properly working and there should be no fear of a widespread outbreak. They have stressed none of the domestic cases found appear to so far be a so-called super spreader case and only two local infections have so far been traced to the cluster and immediately identified. Thousands of contacts and people in the Mae Sai area have tested negative for the virus in the past several days according to the Thai Department of Disease Control.
