Successes and challenges of COVID-19 control and prevention in Thailand

Abstract

COVID-19 is a newly emerging infectious disease that has become pandemic leading to hundreds of millions of confirmed cases and millions of deaths. Thailand was the first country reporting infected case outside China where the pandemic orginated. Yet, Thailand could successfully control and prevent the spread of the first wave of the pandemic for almost throughout the year 2020 owing to its strong and robust public health system as well as the infectious disease surveillance and control systems that have long been continuously developed. On the other hand, Thailand also has several vulnerable aspects as it is an open country whose economy relies mainly on service sector (52.4%), with over five million migrant workers of whom more than half are illegal and living in crowded places. In addition, as a large number of Thais are poor, there are several spots susceptible to the spread of this infectious disease, such as slums, prisons, entertainment venues, and unlawful casinos that did not comply with COVID-19 preventive measures, together with weak law enforement. These conditions led to the second wave of pandemic in the late 2020 and a third greater pandemic which started in April 2021. Similar to other developing countries, Thailand does not have know-how or technology for the research & deveopment or the production of COVID-19 vaccine for timely domestic use; therefore, the country has to rely solely on imported vaccines. As the global production of vaccines was limited during the first year of pandemic, the vaccine market was therefore dominated by the manufacturers causing the delay of vaccine procurement and inefficient utilization of the limited amount of vaccine. Traditional medicine e.g., Thai traditional medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, has served as complementary medicine to partly help relieve this public health problem.