Thailand was nailing coronavirus until they started to see a sudden spike. Here’s how they got caught out

As the end of 2020 approached, Thailand was in an enviable position.

As other nations confronted soaring coronavirus case numbers, the country had only 4,246 infections and just 60 deaths in a population of 70 million people.

Life had just about returned to normal. Thailand had even begun to welcome foreign tourists again after a two-week hotel quarantine stay.

Then, the week before Christmas, a 67-year-old vendor at a seafood market in Samut Sakhon province, just outside Bangkok, tested positive to COVID-19 despite no overseas travel records.

It remains a mystery precisely where and from whom the vendor contracted COVID-19, but Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has pointed the finger at illegal immigrants from neighbouring Myanmar.

The outbreak did spread amongst the local, tight-knit migrant community — a large source of labour for Thailand’s seafood industry — but the…