Outbreak investigation: Three confirmed COVID-19 cases who came back from Pakistan, June 2020

Abstract

Background: The Operation team, Department of Disease Control (DDC) was notified from Situation Awareness Team (SAT) of DDC about three confirmed cases of COVID-19 who had just come back from Pakistan and had arrived at Suvarnabhumi airport on 6 June 2020. All of them were detained at the hotel in Bangkapi District, Bangkok which was managed as the State Quarantine (SQ) for COVID-19. The Operation team then conducted the outbreak investigation in order to confirm the diagnosis and the outbreak, to describe the distribution of the outbreak, to identify the high-risk contact cases of the patients as well as the active cases, to know the risk factors, and to recommend the control measures.
Methods: The descriptive study was performed by reviewing medical records, interviewing patients, tracing the high–risk contact cases of the patient, finding the active case at State Quarantine, and studying managerial process at SQ.
Results: We found three confirmed cases of COVID-19 from total passengers of 24 persons who came back from Pakistan by Pakistan Airlines (flight PK8892) on 6 June 2020. First Two patients were 28–years–old Thai male, studied in Islamic religious at the same institute. Both had history of public contact at many places such as mosque, canteen, dormitory and toilet, etc. Both had history of laboratory confirmed for SARS-CoV-2 since early May 2020. They were detained until negative laboratory result before came back to Thailand. The third patient were 35–years–old Thai female, working as a merchant. She had 13 household closed contact cases. Some of her closed contact cases also got illness but were not diagnosed yet. After laboratory for SARS-CoV-2 of these three patients were positive in Thailand, all of them were sent to admit in the hospitals until laboratory were negative then they were discharge. For the study of managerial process at SQ, all processes met with standard guideline.
Recommendations: We recommended 1) health personnel follow up patients’ symptoms and emphasize them about social distancing and personal sanitation, and 2) health personnel monitor the COVID-19 situation of Pakistan which will be used as the underlying data for future risk assessment and outbreak investigation among the passengers who came back from this country.