The Ministry of Industry is seeking cooperation from about 80,000 factories across the country by taking precautionary steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in their work places.
In the ministerial announcement, issued by Industry Minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit, the owners and managers of the factories are required to adopt the following measures:
- Make sanitizer, soap or alcohol available at the factories for their workers, who are also advised to wear face masks. If any worker coughs or sneezes, they will be required to wear masks all the time and all employees, as well as visitors, should have their body temperature measured.
- Increase the frequency of floor, restroom and elevator disinfection, paying special attention to areas most exposed to hand contact.
- Advise employees to delay or avoid foreign trips, especially to high-risk countries, until April or until there is a further advisory from the Government.
- In case travel abroad is unavoidable, the travellers must exercise caution and follow the recommendations of health officials strictly. Upon their arrival back in Thailand, they must enter self-quarantine for 14 days.
Industry Minister Suriya insisted that the precautionary measures are necessary in the light of the worldwide spread of the contagion.
Meanwhile, it was reported that the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, Thailand’s telecom and broadcast regulator, has proposed that the country’s three mobile phone service providers, AIS, True and DTAC, sell SIM cards to returning Thais and foreign tourists, so they can be contacted or located by health officials to follow up their health status.
An average of 50,000 people, including Thais, enter Thailand every day.
An informed source said, however, that the NBTC’s proposal has received an adverse response from the mobile phone service providers, as they say that the forced sale of the SIM cards might be rejected and result in complaints being lodged against them.
The Local Administration Department, on Tuesday, sent a letter to all provincial governors to clarify that Thailand’s coronavirus situation is still in Stage Two, not in Stage Three as widely misunderstood.
The misunderstanding was caused by an earlier letter from the department asking provincial governors to make preparations to cope with the virus outbreak entering Stage Three.
