Over the past two months, health volunteers have visited more than 11.8 million households around Thailand and have identified about 660,000 people who are thought to be at high-risk of contracting and/or spreading COVID-19 for monitoring.

Dr. Tharet Krasnairawiwong, director-general of the Health Service Support Department, said today that this group of people includes 59,178 returning from abroad, 463,756 arriving in the provinces from Bangkok and those linked to the boxing stadium and entertainment venue clusters.

The role of the health volunteers is to advise these people to comply strictly with the advice to stay at home and practice social distancing.

On the resort island of Phuket, health workers have screened over 3,000 people, since the launch of the active search measure last week to look for new coronavirus infections by targeting areas where infections have already occurred, or where there is a high concentration of workers in the night entertainment business.

Dr. Sopon Iamsirithavorn, director of the provincial disease control office, said that 9% of the high risk group were found to be infected while only 1.1% of the general public tests positive.

He said that quick discovery of the infected will result in early quarantine, which helps to limit the spread of the disease.

He added that the coronavirus situation in Phuket is now under control, although infection rate is second, after Bangkok.