Why is the omicron wave in Thailand slower/flatter than elsewhere?

[djay]

Initial data overseas showed omicron as a massive spike with a steep but short increase and similar steep decrease. Why isn't omicron in thailand playing out like that?
Some have suggested this is evidence that Thailand is making up the numbers

[djay]

Good question
Keep looking at the IHME model updates blog as they try to work out what factors drive omircon transmission

First it's a misconception that all countries had fast large spikes for omicron.
e.g.

• Austria
  
• Germany
  
• UK
  

Some possible answers are

• geography. Thailand is not very dense outside bangkok and bangkok is heavily vaccinated. So it's taking longer for it to spread. if you look at UK for example, what seemed like an initial steep drop has turned into a plateau and the theory is that this is due omicron spreading in denser areas first then more slowly in less dense areas. Thailand also had the initial clusters of omicron be outside of Bangkok which explains why the inital spike was not the peak.

see https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/

• Temperature, outdoor living and high mask use could also be slowing it. General trend is for it to slower in asia.
• Another possible reason is the behaviour of people. You can see that people isolated quickly with the first spike in omicron cases but then relaxed again which could have been what helped the spread speed up again.
• BA.1 vs BA.2 Variant. A lot of the world has had a 2nd spike due to BA.2. In some places that might just merge so the BA.1 and BA.2 curves just blend into one. The data for Thailand BA.2 is not yet available regularly but as of mid march is was about 50%.
  • 
• Testing Capacity. Since cases are only counted from PCR and there seems to be a 70k limit on PCR tests then the true spike could be capped by inability for people to get PCR tests when the capacity is at peak.
  • 
  • It's not clear if the lower number of tests in some areas for omicron is demand or lower capacity due to budget or policy.
• Made up numbers: Seems very unlikely since there have been too many cases of numbers that have been embarrasing for the government.
  • TODO: run a Benford's analysis on the case numbers, inc province numbers to get likelihood of them being made up