Covid-19 News & Updates

[Dannie Boy]

I don’t think there’s a place on the planet (other than maybe the two arctic circles) that is Covid free. Ok honesty is what we’re all looking for, but if there’s a way then can bend the truth to their advantage, there going to do so.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[HHTel]

She tested positive for a non-transmissible form of the novel coronavirus at Ramathibodi Hospital on Tuesday as she planned to go overseas.

There are other reports that identify the cases as 'trace elements'.

If true, then it is reasonable to conclude that they weren't local infections.

[Big Boy]

Hmmmmm............when Ramathibodi Hospital reported first, it was tested positive for the virus. Where did this non-transmissible form of the novel coronavirus come from? Sorry, this is the first time I've come across the term. Multiple tests in quarantine show her clear, then she gets a non-transmissible form of the novel coronavirus. By definition, its non-transmissible, so how? It all sounds suspicious to me.

[HHTel]

The 'non-transmissable form' came from:

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... quarantine

Health authorities have allayed fears of Covid-19 transmissions after new lab tests showed a 35-year-old Thai woman who completed 14-day quarantine had later tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies, not a live virus.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... -officials

The above also quotes the other woman as having a non-transmissable form of the disease.

[Big Boy]

So a Thai invention?

[HHTel]

True, but it is unlikely that they've contracted it locally. Time will tell if it's been passed to anyone else.

So Thailand will still boast of no local infections for 90 days. (Vietnam went 100 days before discovering new infections - 10 days to go!)

[handdrummer]

In the meantime, the emergency decree has been extended to the end of Sept. Ostensibly to "protect" us from the Corona Virus and has nothing to do with the protests. Cough, cough.

[lindosfan1]

I don’t think there’s a place on the planet (other than maybe the two arctic circles) that is Covid free. Ok honesty is what we’re all looking for, but if there’s a way then can bend the truth to their advantage, there going to do so.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Samoa has reported no cases, they shut their borders at the beginning, there may be more.

[HHTel]

There's about a dozen or so countries and districts who claim to be covid free.
A quick Google will list them along with the believability of each.

[GroveHillWanderer]

Hmmmmm............when Ramathibodi Hospital reported first, it was tested positive for the virus. Where did this non-transmissible form of the novel coronavirus come from? Sorry, this is the first time I've come across the term. Multiple tests in quarantine show her clear, then she gets a non-transmissible form of the novel coronavirus. By definition, its non-transmissible, so how? It all sounds suspicious to me.

What they're talking about is a phenomenon that has been reported in various different countries but primarily in South Korea. People who have had coronavirus and fully recovered, are sometimes thought to have been re-infected. Actually, what is happening was that they still have "dead" fragments of the virus in their body. An overly-sensitive PCR test can detect these non-viable fragments of the virus but they are not capable of replicating so cannot cause an infection in others.

See article explaining this on the link below:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... KBN22J0HR

As this article puts it:

The RT-PCR machine itself cannot distinguish an infectious viral particle versus a non-infectious virus particle, as the test simply detects any viral component,”

[PeteC]

Ten countries kept out Covid. But did they win?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53831063

(Photos, maps, charts and video at link)

Covid-19 has infected almost every country in the world – apart from 10. So what do they do now?

The Palau Hotel is so named because, when it opened in 1982, it was the Palau Hotel. There were no others.

Since then, this tiny nation, surrounded by the sky-blue Pacific Ocean, has enjoyed a tourism boom.

In 2019, 90,000 tourists came to Palau, five times the total population. In 2017, IMF figures showed, tourism made up 40% of the country’s GDP.

But that was pre-Covid.

Palau's borders have been, in effect, closed since late March. It is one of the 10 countries in the world with no confirmed cases (excluding North Korea and Turkmenistan).

Yet, without infecting a single person, the virus has ravaged the country.

The Palau Hotel has been closed since March, and it’s not alone. The restaurants are empty, the souvenir shops are shut, and the only hotel guests are returning residents in quarantine.

Countries with no recorded Covid-19 cases
Palau
Micronesia
Marshall Islands
Nauru
Kiribati
Solomon Islands
Tuvalu
Samoa
Vanuatu
Tonga

“The ocean here is much prettier than any other place in the world,” says Brian Lee, manager and co-owner of the Palau Hotel.

It is the sky-blue ocean that kept Brian busy. Before Covid, his 54 rooms had an occupancy rate of 70%-80%. But when the borders closed, there was nothing to fall back on.

“It’s a small country, so local people won’t stay in Palau,” says Brian.

He has around 20 staff, and has kept them all on, albeit with reduced hours. “I try to find jobs for them – maintenance, renovation, and so on,” he says.

But empty hotels cannot be maintained and renovated for ever. “I can stay for another half-a-year,” says Brian. “Then I may have to close.”

Brian doesn’t blame the government, which has offered financial support to residents, and has, after all, kept the virus out.

“I think they did a good job,” he says. And yet, if Palau’s first hotel is to survive, something has to change soon.

The president recently announced that “essential” air travel could resume by 1 September. Meanwhile, an “air corridor” with Taiwan, which would allow tourists to visit, has been rumoured.

For Brian, it can’t come soon enough.

“I think they have to start reopening again – maybe have travel bubbles with New Zealand and countries like that,” he says. “Otherwise, no one can survive here.”

Some 2,500 miles (4,000km) east, across the vast Pacific Ocean, the Marshall Islands also remain Covid-free. But, like Palau, no infection does not mean no impact.

The Hotel Robert Reimers sits on a ribbon of land on the main atoll, Majuro, with a lagoon on one side, and ocean on the other. Before Covid, the 37 rooms had an occupancy rate of 75%-88%, with guests mainly from Asia, the Pacific, or “the Mainland” (the United States).

Since the borders closed in early March, that rate is has been 3%-5%.

“We’ve had a few coming from the outer islands,” says Sophia Fowler, who works for the hotel group. “But not a lot.”

Nationally, the country is expected to lose more than 700 jobs in the Covid downturn, the biggest fall since 1997. Of those, 258 will be in the hotel and restaurant sector.

But self-isolation affects more than tourism – and the Marshall Islands are much less dependent on holiday-makers than Palau. A bigger problem is the fishing industry.

To keep the country Covid-free, boats that have been in infected countries are banned from entering the country’s ports. Other boats, including fuel tankers and container ships, must spend 14 days at sea before entering. Fishing licences are unsold, and cargo flights have been cut.

The effect is clear. The Marshall Islands specialise in aquarium fish – the most popular is the flame angel fish – but exports fell by 50%, according to one US report. The shore-based shipment of sashimi tuna fell by the same amount. Other fishing industries expect a 30% fall during the year.

In short, you can keep the virus out, but you can’t beat it. Covid-19 gets you one way or the other.

Sophia “hopes” things return to normal for the country, and Hotel Robert Reimers, next year. But if they don’t?

“Then it’s just not feasible for us,” she says.

But while closing borders has made Covid-free countries poorer, not everyone wants them reopened.

Dr Len Tarivonda is the director of public health in Vanuatu, population 300,000. Though he works in the capital, Port Vila, he is from Ambae, an island of 10,000 people around 170 miles north.

“If you talk to them [in Ambae], the majority say keep the border closed for as long as possible,” he says. “They say: ‘We don’t want the sickness – otherwise we’re doomed, basically.’”

Some 80% of people in Vanuatu live outside towns and the “formal economy”, Dr Tarivonda says.

“And my observation is they don’t necessarily feel the pinch yet. They are subsistence farmers, they grow their own food – they depend on the local, traditional economy.”

Nonetheless, the country will suffer. The Asian Development Bank expects GDP to fall by almost 10% – Vanuatu’s biggest drop since independence in 1980.

That slump is not just down to Covid’s closed borders. In April, Tropical Cyclone Harold battered much of the country, killing three people and affecting more than half the population.

“We had a daily health emergency operation briefing,” Dr Tarivonda remembers. “First we would discuss Covid, then TC Harold. Two disasters going on at the same time.”

Yet Covid will have the longer-lasting impact.

In July, the government announced plans to reopen the border to other “safe” countries by 1 September. Then cases grew in Australia, and New Zealand, and the plan was pushed back.

Dr Tarivonda, who sits on the border task force along with government, tourism, and airline officials, admits they are “almost back to square one”, with no new date for reopening.

Smaller, specific cross-border travel may help Vanuatu. The government recently allowed 172 workers to travel to the Northern Territory in Australia for six months to pick mangoes. While the remittances will help, they are not enough in a country where 35% of GDP comes from tourism.

But, despite that need for open borders, Vanuatu will not rush to reopen. Dr Tarivonda looks at Papua New Guinea, which was almost Covid-free until a sharp increase in late July, with concern.

“If the virus comes, it will probably be like wildfire – and what we are seeing in Papua New Guinea is a reflection of why we are worried,” he says.

“Given our [health care] limitations, the context we have in the Pacific, the best bet is to keep the virus out for as long as possible.”

So is there anything the Covid-free countries can do?

There are short-term measures, such as payments to workers and business. And there is one long-term measure: wait for a vaccine.

Until then, travel bubbles remain the best hope. Yet, as Rommel Rabanal from the Asian Development Bank points out, they sound simpler than they are.

“These arrangements have prerequisites,” he says. “A common set of testing standards, contact tracing, and quarantine facilities, in case outbreaks happen. They are under discussion but there has been slow progress – or perhaps cautious progress.”

And – as seen with Vanuatu’s “September plan” – the bubbles can burst quite easily, too.

“Australia and New Zealand have made it clear the first country they’ll test it with is each other,” says Jonathan Pryke, director of the Pacific islands programme at the Lowy Institute.

“And before that can happen, you need to remove community transmission. So I think the prospects of a travel bubble are off the cards for this year.”

Mr Pryke says that, as the months pass, the desperation is mounting in the closed-off Pacific countries.

He is, however, in no doubt that the only option for these countries was self-isolation on an international scale.

“Even if they kept their borders open, their major tourism markets of Australia and New Zealand wouldn’t be open, as they’ve locked down their own borders," he says.

"So you would have the worst of both worlds – a health crisis and an economic crisis. We’re going to have years and years to look at what the right decisions were.

"But looking back, no one’s going to doubt that locking down was the right move by these Pacific nations.”

[Dannie Boy]

So effectively you can’t take a vacation in a Covid-free location because their borders are closed and any other destination will have varying degrees of Covid infection - and if you’re travelling from Thailand, the vast majority will be significantly higher, so we are stuck here and they’re stuck there!!

[PeteC]

Some youngsters will grow up thinking Christmas was always this way?

Trainee Santas learning how to make Christmas safe celebration

https://www.bangkokpost.com/life/social ... elebration

[PeteC]

We were told yesterday that the only letter size mail eligible for sending out of Thailand is via EMS. In turn, any normal airmail inbound that is not EMS, if here, may very well be in a warehouse somewhere. Local mail originating in Thailand seems to be operating as normal.

This has some implications for people who have to fill out home country government forms and file them on a yearly basis. One such form is the below from the USA Social Security Administration. Those who need to fill these out and submit them, it's highly unlikely that you'll receive the form which is mailed yearly from the US in May and has a due date the end of September. This form is AKA "the are you still alive form".

It's serious though as they will mail a form in May, another around Septmber and if neither is received back by the end of the year any benefits will cease the following February. You can't submit this form online, it has to be physically mailed.

I would suggest you download the form below, fill it out and mail it EMS to the below address. Unfortunately this EMS mailing will cost you about 850 Baht.

Note: Be sure to write you Social Security number in the address box either above or below your name and address. In the comments section on the back it's recommended to state that the original form was not received due to Covid-19 mail disruption.


https://form-ssa-ocr-7162.pdffiller.com/


Social Security Administration
P. O. Box 7162 Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania 18767-7162 USA

Edit: If the above site is cumbersome and/or you don't want to fill out the form on your computer, see the below link which seems easier to simply print it and then fill it out: https://photos.state.gov/libraries/laos ... a7162-.pdf

[migrant]

Thanks Pete!!