BANGKOK, March 18 (TNA) – Seventy-seven illegal migrants tested positive for COVID-19 during their detention at an immigration police facility in Bang Khen district, the immigration chief said.
Pol Lt-Gen Sompong Chingduang, commissioner of the Immigration Bureau, said the 77 migrants had come from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia and were rounded up from many locations including Don Muang district.
He asked health authorities to continue testing detainees for COVID-19 and set up a field hospital there. No immigration police contracted the disease, he said.
The Immigration Bureau had about 2,000 detainees nationwide. About half of them were at a facility in Suan Phlu area of Bangkok and they were free of COVID-19, Pol Lt-Gen Sompong said.
He ordered subordinates to be prepared to receive people who may cross over the border to seek refuge in Thailand from a neighboring country facing internal political situations. (TNA)