Covid-19 cases are decreasing in the country, said a Chulalongkorn University virologist who also predicted how infections will play out next year.
Dr Yong Poovorawan, chief of the university's Centre of Excellence in Clinical Virology, wrote on Facebook that the overall Covid situation is improving and the number of cases will continue dropping till the year's end.
But infections will again spike during cool weather from January to March next year, though the spread will not be severe.
After a drop in cases, the country should then expect an increase from June to September, he said, adding that the number will be lower than this year.
Dr Yong said that vulnerable groups are strongly recommended to get four shots of vaccination against Covid-19 while healthy adults under 60 should get at least three shots.
Meanwhile, the Centre for Medical Genomics at Ramathibodi Hospital has confirmed the second case of BA.2.75.2, a subvariant of Omicron, in Thailand, after the first case was reported last week. BA.2.75.2 evolved from BA.2.75, which started to spread in India in May and showed the most mutations compared with other Covid-19 strains in the country.
The centre said there's no need to panic over the new variant as long as people maintain Covid-19 precautions to prevent the new strain from taking over BA.4.6 and BA.5 which are the dominant strains in Thailand.
Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana, Palang Pracharath Party list-MP, on Monday expressed confidence that the downgrade of Covid-19 from a dangerous communicable disease to "communicable under surveillance" would not be disrupted.
He cited the decrease in the number of Covid-19 patients and the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration's decision to allow drugstores to sell anti-viral drugs to Covid-19 patients with a prescription.
The Public Health Ministry on Monday reported 242 new Covid patients admitted to hospitals and 11 deaths over the past 24 hours.
