The XEC variant of covid19 is back in Thailand with more than 71,000 infected and 19 deaths this year - so far. The XEC is a variant of the Omicron strain first identified in Germany in June last year. Numbers in Thailand spiked significantly during the Songkran period.

Symptoms appear to be similar to those of the other strains of covid. As with that original covid strain, wearing masks, maintaining distance, frequent washing of hands and self isolation if symptoms appear are recommended. I for one will start to wear masks again.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/general/40050055

This is old news worldwide but there had been few if any cases in Thailand until recently. An article in the Yale Medicine website dated December 20 last year suggests that although it is now the most common covid strain, indications are that symptoms are no more severe than earlier ones. Another article suggests booster vaccinations are advised, but I do not know of any medical facility in Thailand yet offering them.

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/3-things-to-know-about-xec-the-latest-covid-strain

I have Bird Flu related  on my bingo card as being the next pandemic, Trump fired half of the "disease detectives".... he didn't learn his lesson from Covid.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250214-trump-admin-fires-cdc-disease-detectives-as-bird-flu-fears-rise-sources

2 minutes ago, floridarob said:

I have Bird Flu related  on my bingo card as being the next pandemic

Bird flu is not transmitted from person to person, you can only get infected from a sick bird

3 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I for one will start to wear masks again.

Masks provide little or no protection to the wearer. They are designed to protect others from the virus spread by the asymptomatic mask wearer.

3 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Another article suggests booster vaccinations are advised

There are no vaccines for modern strains of Covid, and those left over from past strains are useless

7 hours ago, Moses said:

Bird flu is not transmitted from person to person, you can only get infected from a sick bird

So far not yet, but the fact that it now can infect mammal is a worrisome sign.  As we all know these bugs ability to mutate to something more transmit able and deadlier is what Moses is betting on.

11 hours ago, floridarob said:

Trump fired half of the "disease detectives".... he didn't learn his lesson from Covid.

 

isn't he high school dropout ? 

3 hours ago, Walkabout said:

So far not yet, but the fact that it now can infect mammal is a worrisome sign.  As we all know these bugs ability to mutate to something more transmit able and deadlier is what Moses is betting on.

+1, I wanted to comment ' not yet ' on Moses post but you did it better

1 hour ago, vinapu said:

isn't he high school dropout ? 

His father bought all his grades, that's obvious.

I really don't understand why there are no vaccines available now in Thailand. They handled the covid pandemic really well, but suddenly there are no vaccines to be found anywhere. I agree that it would be sensible to start wearing masks again now.

Call me paranoid but the last few days in Australia I have been wearing my mask when I been out shopping 😷😷😷

Some lady in the supermarket coming past said "wearing a mask? as she walked past ,then proceeded to sneez🤧🤧

13 hours ago, vinapu said:

isn't he high school dropout ? 

No problem; do 711s stock bleach?

2 minutes ago, Londoner said:

No problem; do 711s stock bleach?

You will die of the bleach before covid

I just put bleach in my bathroom here at home and .......🥵😫I can't bloody breathe now 

One of those illogical Thailand things. You can't find bleach in the Supermarket within the normal toilet cleaning isle, you have to look in the clothes washing isle under clothes staining. Same % of sodium hypochlorite as in the west for household bleach (3 to 8%).

  This version 6%.

Just tarted up my shower, so as @Olddaddy says above, or to quote from Sweet Painted Lady off the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, "And we'll leave the smell of the sea in your beds. "

5 hours ago, Olddaddy said:

Call me paranoid

you are paranoid

1 hour ago, BjornAgain said:

One of those illogical Thailand things. You can't find bleach in the Supermarket within the normal toilet cleaning isle, you have to look in the clothes washing isle under clothes staining.

nothing illogical, the same here and I'm quite a distance from Thailand (unfortunately)

On 5/17/2025 at 1:57 PM, Moses said:

Masks provide little or no protection to the wearer.

N95 masks? I think you are wrong.

Let's also recall that while bird flu may be limited at present to birds and non-flying birdlike creatures - I can recall when Hong Kong culled hundreds of thousands of chickens due to bird flu - serious illnesses do spread from animals to humans. The clear example here was SARS in 2003. That was first discovered in Hong Kong and was traced to a visitor from Guangdong Province who had been sneezing in a hotel lift. Before then, it had appeared in China with some 300 or so infections and five deaths. It was then reported to the WHO.

Although the number of deaths was relatively small - around 770 - and largely confined to Chinese communities in China, Hong Kong, Canada and Taiwan, there were many thousand non-lethal cases. I can recall returning to Bangkok on a TG flight and being very concerned about a passenger two rows in front of me who spent the entire flight coughing. It was no pandemic, but it caused a great deal of concern around the world.

SARS was discovered in animals and had jumped the species barrier.

23 hours ago, Olddaddy said:

You will die of the bleach before covid

I just put bleach in my bathroom here at home and .......🥵😫I can't bloody breathe now 

I was referencing Trump. One of his immortal pearls of wisdom. 

On 5/18/2025 at 1:58 PM, Olddaddy said:

You will die of the bleach before covid

I just put bleach in my bathroom here at home and .......🥵😫I can't bloody breathe now 

You do realise, don't you, this is a joke referring to Trump's advice during his first session to inject bleach?

If he injects himself with a litre of dettol I'm happy to see if it works. 

"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?

"So it'd be interesting to check that."

4 hours ago, zoomomancs said:

"So it'd be interesting to check that."

And people voted for him a 2nd time 🙄

On 5/18/2025 at 10:15 AM, Ruthrieston said:

I really don't understand why there are no vaccines available now in Thailand.

Hello @Ruthrieston

I saw in this weeks PCEC - Pattaya City Expats Club newsletter that the below vaccine information was made available.

I believe that you can sign up by writing to:

info@pcec.club

2 hours ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

Hello @Ruthrieston

I saw in this weeks PCEC - Pattaya City Expats Club newsletter that the below vaccine information was made available.

I believe that you can sign up by writing to:

info@pcec.club

That's for flu. I think @Ruthrieston was referring to vaccines for Covid, as in the thread title.

20 hours ago, PeterRS said:

N95 masks? I think you are wrong.

N95 and FPP2 have special name - respirators. I'm talking about simple medical masks.

N95 and FPP2 are better for to wear by sick persons because they filter up to 98% of exhaled viruses. And they still have low impact on protection for healthy people.

Wearing masks is psychological thing - you feel shield on you. Does it work really? Ask Chat GPT

On 5/17/2025 at 4:53 PM, Walkabout said:

So far not yet, but the fact that it now can infect mammal is a worrisome sign.  As we all know these bugs ability to mutate to something more transmit able and deadlier is what Moses is betting on.

Anyone is ready to explain why virus, which is living on our planet longer than mammal exist should mutate now?

And, by the way: bird flu has 65% death rate for humans. Viruses with such death rate and short incubation time can't create pandemy - they kill own host too fast. Covid became pandemy when it extended incubation time to 7 days and death rate fall below 10%. Flu (normal) has death rate below 0.05% - it is only way for virus to survive globally - do not kill host.

58 minutes ago, Moses said:

 

Wearing masks is psychological thing - you feel shield on you. Does it work really? Ask Chat GPT

I think covid is not kind of virus which may infect ChatGPT but I may be wrong