Thai volunteers step up as Covid-19 Delta cases send hospitals to ‘point of collapse’

Thanapon Songput, a worker at the non-profit Mirror Foundation, has been arranging to provide oxygen tanks for Covid-19 patients around Thailand’s capital in the past month. The group allocates up to 90 tanks for about 15 patients a day, but the overwhelming demand has rendered its efforts almost futile. Thanapon said one patient died as she called to plead for help from the foundation. “We could never work fast enough. We asked her to wait, but it was too late,” he said. As Bangkok reels from Thailand’s third wave of infections fuelled by the Delta variant, civic groups have stepped in to support those left behind by a health system on the verge of collapse. Even the government-run health care call centres have been swamped, with reports of calls going unanswered or ambulances not being sent to patients, adding to the desperation on the ground. Volunteers and civic groups have set up their own patient screening processes, call centres, and networks of aid workers to plug in the gaps, including transporting patients to Covid-19 test centres or field hospitals. Thailand tightens Covid-19 restrictions after record cases and casualties Zendai is one of the groups helping people to receive treatment. Co-founder Chris Potranandana said Zendai, which means “thread” in Thai, acts as a platform linking vulnerable patients to the health system. Since the group was formed in April, it has fielded about 2,000 calls a day and registered some 13,000 patients in its database, which it uses to connect with the government health care system to fast-track admissions. Anukool Saibejra, Zendai’s operations manager, said the government could not deliver aid efficiently because its database system was not comprehensive or flexible enough. We have had many cases where patients were left to die at home because they were told there were not enough hospital beds Chris Potranandana, Zendai “We don’t want anyone to die because they cannot find an ambulance or cannot get in touch with the government call centres,” Chris said. “We have had many cases where patients were left to die at home because they were told there were not enough hospital beds,” he said. “While that is the case now, it was not actually a few months ago.” According to Chris, some laboratories and hospitals had kept Covid-19 test results from patients because “patients are like money bags”. “Their test results are often withheld until a particular hospital is available to treat that patient,” he said, explaining that the costs incurred could then be collected from the National Health Security Office which runs the kingdom’s universal health care scheme. On Zendai’s Facebook page, Bangkok resident Namman said in a post that her uncle had died while waiting for his test result. “They went for a Covid-19 test on the 8th,” wrote Namman earlier this month. “But the hospital contacted us on the 13th after my uncle had already passed away. The document showed that the result was issued on the 9th but no one got in touch with us.” PUBLIC ANGER Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s administration has come under increasing fire for its management of the Delta variant-fuelled surge and slow vaccination programme. Reports this week of people dying on the streets of Bangkok added pressure to the government, which has virtually locked down the capital to cut the number of daily cases by 10 times. Large companies have shut their operations as the restrictions have caused supply chain delays. Toyota on Thursday suspended operations at all three of its plants in Thailand through next Wednesday due to a shortage of parts. The country on Friday reported 14,575 new infections and 114 casualties, bringing the total caseload to over 467,000 and the death toll to 3,811. Health authorities have warned daily cases could reach 30,000. Between April 1 to July 21 this year, more than 120,000 new cases were logged in Bangkok, accounting for a quarter of the nationwide total of 424,269 recorded during that period. ‘Fed-up Doctors’ in Thailand demand Pfizer vaccines amid brutal third wave Last Sunday, protesters gathered to demand Prayuth’s resignation. They also called for the government to increase the budget to deal with Covid-19 and switch the main vaccines to those using mRNA technology, like Pfizer or Moderna. Thailand has relied on Sinovac and AstraZeneca to inoculate almost 15 million of its 66 million people. The immunisation campaign has been sluggish, undermined by a lack of public confidence in Sinovac and a shortage of AstraZeneca shots. The government had earlier said Thailand would receive 61 million AstraZeneca doses by the end of the year, or some 10 million doses per month by December, but leaked correspondence details between the company and the health minister this week showed AstraZeneca never committed to that number. Deputy Health Minister Sathit Pitutecha said this month that the timeline to receive the 61 million AstraZeneca doses could be extended to 2022. PEOPLE ARE ON THEIR OWN As the crisis grows, it is increasingly harder for patients to receive treatment. Almost a dozen large hospitals in Bangkok this week said they could not accept any new patients except in cases of emergency. Even field hospitals have reached full capacity. On July 19, Thammasat University Hospital said 72 of their staff members had tested positive for the virus, placing further stress on their ICU wards, negative-pressure rooms, patient wards and field hospital. The hospital on Friday also said under new criteria, patients who were 75 years and older might not be considered receiving intubation treatment, as well as those in the terminal stages of Covid-19. “At the moment, the Thai [health] system is chaotic, confusing and unmanageable. Everyone please take care of yourself. The hospital system is being threatened to the point of collapse now,” Thammasat said in a Facebook post. Southeast Asia’s Covid-19 deaths skyrocket as Delta variant engulfs region Ping, an emergency doctor at a hospital in Bangkok, said people were effectively on their own. “People have to help themselves 100 per cent now. We also feel bad every time we have to talk to the patient’s family about the extent of what we can do now. “For example, in cases of extremely limited resources, doctors might have to advise that younger people receive help as they have more chance of recovery,” she said. “We are not there yet, but almost.” Ping said in the past few weeks, patients who were referred to her hospital’s emergency ward were almost always Covid-positive, even if they had other symptoms such as stroke or kidney failure. Some coronavirus patients have had to lie on beds in front of the hospital building as they waited for wards to clear up. “It is better if they stay in the open air (than inside),” she said. Meanwhile, the government is planning to turn a terminal at Thailand’s Suvarnabhumi airport into a 4,500-bed field hospital, scheduled to open in August. Zendai and the Mirror Foundation are also looking to partner with different agencies to build field hospitals or community shelters to handle a higher number of patients. Both groups, who have begun operating around the clock, said they feared there was no end in sight. “We think we have to continue working until the end of the year or even beyond,” said Zendai’s Chris. “Unless Thailand has sufficient vaccines, this will never end.”