COVID-19 Death Rate Soars, Thailand's Ministry Of Health Proposes Strict Restrictions

A masked woman in Chinatown, Bangkok, Thailand/ Antara

JAKARTA - Thailand's Ministry of Health proposed new travel restrictions and tighter restrictions in high-risk areas to contain the rise in COVID-19 cases.

The proposal for tighter restrictions comes as Thailand reports a record daily death toll. Where in a day 75 people die from the Coronavirus.

Prime Minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, will consider the new restrictions at a meeting on Friday, July 9.

"The health ministry will propose the first steps to limit travel and so that people don't leave their homes unless necessary", Kiattiphum Wongrajit, the ministry's permanent secretary, told reporters quoted by Reuters from Antara, Thursday, July 8.

He said that inter-provincial travel cessation was also being proposed.

Other proposed measures include closing off non-essential places and areas that attract large crowds, Kiatiphum said.

The restrictions will be in effect for 14 days and will cover the Bangkok metropolitan area and the "buffer zone", Kiatiphum said without elaborating.

"This set of restrictions that will be imposed is of the same intensity as those imposed in April 2020", he said, referring to last year's lockdown measures that included a nationwide curfew.

Currently, Thailand has implemented measures in "high-risk zones", including Bangkok and surrounding provinces, to close malls early and ban eating in restaurants.

However, these measures have not been able to stop the rate of transmission of the Coronavirus infection in the past month.

Thailand's COVID-19 task force on Thursday reported 7,058 new cases, bringing the country's total COVID-19 cases to 308,230.

Thailand has also recorded 2,462 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began last year.