The 125 new COVID deaths blew past the prior year high totals of 119 reported yesterday and 115 on Thursday. The 2,062 COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition became the country's second highest tally of the year exceeded only by a 2,065 count of such cases reported last Monday.
The bad news on new COVID deaths and serious hospitalizations came despite Thailand reporting more declines in officially reported new COVID cases to 18,892 and total active COVID cases under care to 221,452, both numbers declining steadily during the past week amid a general slowdown during the Songkran New Year's holidays. And both official numbers are widely considered vast undercounts with many cases going unreported.
With Saturday's update, new daily COVID deaths in Thailand have risen for the past four consecutive days, and new serious COVID hospitalizations have risen for the past three consecutive days despite the New Year's holidays, both considered better indicators of the direction of the country's COVID pandemic.
Among the serious condition hospitalized COVID cases, the share in the worst condition, those requiring intubation to breathe, declined slightly to 867, but that still is the third highest daily total of the year, and the decline from 872 the day before mostly because of all the new deaths.
Overall, Saturday's update pushed Thailand's official COVID death toll for 2022 past the 5,000 mark for the first time to 5,056. And it pushed Thailand's total tally of official cases since the start of the pandemic past the 4 million mark for the first time, hitting 4,012,184, which would represent more than 5 percent of the country's population if it were accurate.
For added context, during the peak of the Delta wave last fall, Thailand's daily COVID case count topped out at 23,418, but the numbers of serious hospital cases and the intubated share of those peaked above 5,600 and 1,100 respectively, and daily deaths topped 300 for a brief period.
