BANGKOK, July 5. /TASS/: The existence of the so-called Thai coronavirus strain has not been confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO), Tanee Sangrat, Director-General of the Thai Foreign Ministry’s Department of Information, said in a statement, commenting on the words of a Russian expert who said that a Thai coronavirus strain had been found in Russia.
"In its latest move to prevent stigmatization of any country, the World Health Organization (WHO) created a namelist to reference the different coronavirus strains found in various countries around the globe by using the Greek Alphabet," according to the statement referred to TASS. "Therefore, for such article to mention the types of Covid-19 strain by country does not only undermine the efforts by health experts to prevent such labeling from occurring, but to instigate unwarranted resentment on others."
Deputy CEO of the Russian Federal Biomedical Agency for research and production, German Shipulin, said in an interview with the Doctor television channel on June 30 that a Thai coronavirus strain had been exposed in Russia.
"However, given the fact that your article did make reference by countries, including Thailand, I wish to clarify further that the WHO has never confirmed the existence of a 'Thai strain,'" the Thai diplomat stressed.
"WHO and its partners, comprising experts, national authorities, institutions, and researchers around the globe have been monitoring and assessing the evolution of Covid-19 since January last year in order to inform countries and the public on how to react should significant mutation are identified. The nature of this data collection would include countries in which the samples were originated. Again, updated data (as of I July 2021) <…> does not include Thailand as countries where samples of SAR-CoV-2 variant were found in any case." Sangart explained.
To date, 5,635,294 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 5,083,441 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 138,579 fatalities nationwide.
The first coronavirus case was confirmed in Thailand on January 13, 2020. By now, the country has reported 289,200 cases, more than 223,400 recoveries, and 2,200 coronavirus-associated deaths.
