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      Positive impact of lockdown on COVID-19 outbreak in Thailand

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          Abstract

          To the Editor, In Southeast Asian countries, Thailand is the first country that reported a case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outside of China. The first confirmed case of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in Thailand was announced on January 17, 2020 [1]. The diagnosis and contact tracing this disease were tested by using real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. As of May 02, Thailand has reported 2966 cases of laboratory-confirmed coronavirus 2019, 2732 recovered cases, and 54 deaths from COVID-19 in 68 of 77 provinces. Bangkok has the highest number of cases (1538 cases) followed by Phuket (220 cases), and Nonthaburi (157 cases), respectively [2]. The average age of COVID-19 patients was 40 years (range, 1 month to 97 years) and 1621 of the 2966 patients (54.65%) were men [1]. The highest number of confirmed cases in Thailand was reported on March 22. There were 188 new cases of tested positive for COVID-19 who related boxing stadium and drinking venue [3]. An immediate nationwide lockdown was instituted in Thailand, which protected Thailand citizens from COVID-19. The government of Thailand has announced a nationwide curfew on April 3, 2020. The government requests that people must wear a face mask, practice social distancing, and remain inside their residents from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m [4]. After the curfew has been in place, the figure for new COVID-19 cases was continued to fall when compared with the cases report in March as shown in Fig. 1 [5]. According to the curfew and quarantine or isolation situation, the positive rate among persons under investigation is 1.9%, which seems to be decreased from mid-January to April 6, 2020. Fig. 1 Epidemic curves of reported cases with COVID-19 in Thailand. Fig. 1 Even though the number of new cases showed a downward trend, the COVID-19 national curfew and emergency decree for Thailand has been extended to June 15, 2020 to curb the spread of this virus. However, the restrictions will be gradually eased to prevent a second wave of infections. Furthermore, there were no new deaths reported for 5 days in a row and there were no new cases of healthcare workers. A significant decrease in the daily number of new COVID-19 cases could be likely attributed to the rigorous Thai government lockdown measures. Accordingly, stringent containment of people in heavily affected areas seems to have a great potential to prevent or slow down the spread of COVID-19. Ethical approval This article does not require any human/animal subjects to acquire such approval. Financial support No financial support was provided relevant to this article. Declaration of competing interest All authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.

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          Author and article information

          Contributors
          Journal
          Travel Med Infect Dis
          Travel Med Infect Dis
          Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease
          Elsevier Ltd.
          1477-8939
          1873-0442
          20 June 2020
          20 June 2020
          : 101802
          Affiliations
          [1]Program in Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Thai Red Cross Society, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
          [2]Department of Biochemistry, Osteoarthritis and Musculoskeleton Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Thai Red Cross Society, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
          [3]Department of Biochemistry, Osteoarthritis and Musculoskeleton Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Thai Red Cross Society, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
          Author notes
          []Corresponding author. Osteoarthritis and Musculoskeleton Research Unit, Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Thai Red Cross Society, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand. sittisak.h@ 123456chula.ac.th
          Article
          S1477-8939(20)30298-2 101802
          10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101802
          7305760
          32569811
          19050b67-7191-4eec-a408-ec3a010ccd90
          © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

          Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

          History
          : 11 May 2020
          : 16 June 2020
          : 17 June 2020
          Categories
          Article

          Infectious disease & Microbiology
          Infectious disease & Microbiology

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