Samut Sakhon’s Governor Veerasak Vichitsangsri has volunteered to resign if his officials fail to contact COVID-19 patients, currently in community isolation facilities or pre-admission centres, within 24 hours of the patients asking to be transferred to hospitals for treatment.

In a Facebook post on “COVID-19 Samut Sakhon” page” on Saturday, the governor admitted that communication between patients and officials, about requests for hospital beds, has been an issue all along, adding that he has instructed the officials to improve the communication and to make sure that the patients’ requests receive a response within 24 hours.

Due to the inconvenient public access to COVID-19 screening, caused by long queues, shortages of antigen test kits (ATKs) and the requirement for social security coverage, Governor Veerasak said he has decided to procure 10,000 ATKs, to be distributed to hospitals, for use on people considered to be at high risk, free of charge, starting on Tuesday.

He also said that the so-called Huangyai boxes, which contain basic necessities, such as a thermometer, an oximeter and Fa Talai Jone herbal medicine, are only intended for COVID-infected people in home isolation or who are waiting to be admitted to hospitals.

COVID-19 pandemic situation in this coastal province of Thailand is deteriorating, with over 1,000 new daily infections in the past three days. Cumulative infections, from April 1st 2021 to yesterday (Saturday), were 24,238, with a death toll of 89.