THE PUBLIC Health Ministry said this afternoon (Dec. 9) that one more Omicron case has emerged in the country with this being a Thai man returning from Democratic Republic of the Congo, Amarin TV said.
He is the fourth case of the new variant in this country with the ministry yesterday confirming that two Thai women who returned from Nigeria on Nov. 24 too were infected as was an American man who travelled to Thailand from Spain a few days earlier similarly infected.
Dr. Supakit Sirilak, head of the Medical Sciences Department, said the 41-year-old Thai man is a UN official and has received two Astra Zeneca jabs. Upon arriving he went through the Test & Go procedure with his Covid test showing a mutation location consistent with Omicron's location. This indicates a high chance of being infected with the new strain.
His samples have been sent for whole genome sequencing (WGS) test and the result confirming whether or not it is Omicron will be out in a day or two.
Investigation into risk groups is currently underway.
The ministry has said early this morning that there were 4,203 Covid cases and 49 deaths over the past 24 hours taking the cumulative confirmed total since April to 2,127,724 and from the onset of the pandemic 2,156,587, Sanook.com said.
Today's 49 fatalities raised the death toll to 21,084.
Another 7,939 patients were cured taking total recoveries since April to 2,047,662 with 60,415 patients still undergoing treatment.