Fear of MERS spreading by Thai Haji pilgrims
The Thai government is concerned about the more than 10.000 Thai Muslims who plan to travel to Saudi Arabia. They may be a new source of MERS infections.
The Islamic pilgrimage (Hadji) to Mecca at the end of September is therefore viewed with suspicion and the Thai authorities are taking a number of preventive measures. Although the pilgrims are not hindered, they are being monitored and registered, Surachet Satitramai (ministry of health) said. Pilgrims returning from the pilgrimage will be checked for symptoms of illness and possibly isolated.
Thailand is on extra alert after a 75-year-old businessman from Oman, who had come to Bangkok because of a heart condition, was found to have MERS.
South Korea
The South Korean health ministry announced on Monday that two more people have died from the disease. The death toll is now at 27. Three new cases of infection have also surfaced. 172 people now have the lung virus among the members. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) was first found in South Korea last month. It is the largest disease outbreak outside the Middle East. Thousands of people are in quarantine and more than four hundred schools keep their doors closed to prevent the spread of the virus.
Source: Bangkok Post – http://goo.gl/Ex3mSu
Easy to solve…
Anyone coming from Thailand to
middle east leaves.,
A clear statement in it
passport, and on return
check in question properly
diseases.
The risk that visitors to the Middle East bring Mers to Thailand is so great that you should refuse to return. Thailand cannot handle such an epidemic, medically and financially.
If you point this out to the travelers, they will know what's going on!
Refuse to allow Thai nationals to return to Thailand? How do you imagine that?
So it is not inconceivable that someone with MERS will take it from Dubai or Abu Dahbi to Bangkok. Then cancel all those flights?
There are hubs in the Middle East (recently also Doha) that are also used quite a lot by Thailand visitors here.
Don't panic, just saying… 😉
The risk of a stopover 😉
Then people will travel via detours. In the Netherlands we have also seen people suspected of Ebola do this in a roundabout way. Just by train, bus or plane, etc. You just have to get suspicious people out. But how? Most people are going to avoid that because they don't want to go to a hospital and be isolated from family. Whether a thermal camera is enough in this case? In Asia you always see action at airports when disease shows up. At Schiphol you see nothing, no one trying to stop diseases. While KLM operates so many direct flights all over the world. How fast was the swine flu in the Netherlands again?