By Linda Khoo Hui Li
\nBANGKOK: Thailand\u2019s Public Health Ministry is planning to treat COVID-19 as an endemic illness this year amid the ongoing battle against the fifth wave of the coronavirus infections in the country.
\nForeign Ministry’s deputy spokesman Natapanu Nopakun said the Public Health authorities have announced their plans to effectively manage the COVID-19 outbreak as\u00a0Thailand entered its third year fighting COVID-19.
\n\u201cThe Public Health authorities will be managing this wave of infections to enable COVID-19 transition to endemic as more people develop immunity,\u201d he said at a press conference here, Friday.
\nMeanwhile, Director-General of the Disease Control Department Dr Opas Karnkawinpong said COVID-19 could only become endemic when the virus is less severe and manageable via higher vaccination rate.\u00a0
\n\u201cWe expect the disease will become endemic this year. It is not today or tomorrow.\u00a0We\u00a0will consider COVID-19 an endemic when its is controllable and the fatality rate is low.
\n\u201cWe are launching a public awareness (campaign) on how to live with COVID-19 as endemic disease,\u201d he said.
\nHe added that countries\u00a0like United Kingdom\u00a0and the United States also predicted that COVID-19 may become endemic.\u00a0\u00a0
\nOn Tuesday, the World\u00a0 Health Organisation (WHO) warned against treating COVID-19 as an endemic rather than as a pandemic as the spread of the Omicron variant has not yet stabilised.
\n— BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Linda Khoo Hui Li BANGKOK: Thailand\u2019s Public Health Ministry is planning to treat COVID-19 as an endemic illness this year amid the ongoing battle against the fifth wave of the coronavirus infections in the country. Foreign Ministry’s deputy spokesman Natapanu Nopakun said the Public Health authorities have announced their plans to effectively manage the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berita-dunia"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9538,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9536\/revisions\/9538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}