Thailand Recovery Fund Phase 2

Overview

Understanding that Covid-19 is mostly airborne is crucial but has not been stressed enough in the media and the public. In fact, aerosols tinier than 5 microns are the great carriers of Covid-19 virus, and this is the main way that people inhale the virus, get infected and spread the disease, resulting in clusters of infection and in public places creating an endless vicious cycle. “Stop Airborne: Airborne crises can be stopped by wearing quality respirators” is a campaign under Socialgiver’s Thailand Recovery Fund in collaboration with Thailand Post to distribute good quality respirator to everyone.

Remarks: 1 person is allowed to register to get 1 set of free respirator (10 pieces).

Problem

Understanding that Covid-19 is mostly airborne is crucial but has not been stressed enough in the media and the public. In fact, aerosols tinier than 5 microns are the great carriers of Covid-19 virus, and this is the main way that people inhale the virus, get infected and spread the disease, resulting in clusters of infection and in public places creating an endless vicious cycle.

Mission of Thailand Recovery Fund Phase 2

“Stop Airborne: Airborne crises can be stopped by wearing quality respirators” is a campaign under Socialgiver’s Thailand Recovery Fund in collaboration with Thailand Post to distribute good quality respirator to everyone.

“Quality respirators” are a key part of the arsenal to stop the spread of Covid-19. However, quality respirators that can filter the aerosols smaller than 5 microns in size are not a popular choice among people yet. A lot of people are depending on surgical masks or cloth masks.

Surgical masks have an average filtration efficiency of 50.50% while the range of available cloth masks have an average filtration efficiency of 39.10%. Substandard respirators including N95 and KF94 models pervasive in the market have an average filtration efficiency of 72.21% instead of 94-99% according to their standards. As a result, users still have greater exposure to Covid-19 virosols when they are in risk areas shared by Covid-infected people.

Target of Thailand Recovery Fund Phase 2

• Limited Edition Respirator for Kids 1 million pieces (100,000 set)
• Expected cost: 30 THB per set (1 set = 10 pieces)
• Fundraising Goal 3,000,000 THB

Bank Transfer

To donate to this fund, you can also transfer money to:

Account Name: Yuvabadhana Foundation for Socialgiver

Bank: TTB

Account Number: 075-2-38338-0

Please send your transfer receipt to LINE @Socialgiver.

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Thailand Recovery Fund Phase 1

Thailand Recovery Fund was founded to provide effective solutions during times of crisis, emergencies, and natural disasters. Established during the COVID crisis, we have worked to provide immediate response to outbreaks, educate the public, and provide effective solutions to address the crisis.

Our current focus is to reduce the spread of COVID through distribution of Rapid Antigen Test Kits (ATKs) to low-income, high-risk communities across Bangkok. For this project, Socialgiver is working in collaboration with Rama Hospital (Mahidol University), Department of Medical services (Ministry of Health), Yuvabadhana Foundation, Covid Relief Bangkok, Thai Care, Nat Aniporn Potter (Miss Universe Thailand 2015), and Zero Covid Thailand.

Hospitals across Thailand have been operating over capacity for many months, both in receiving the high number of cases as well as in testing for COVID. RT PCR, although highly sensitive, requires potentially infectious people to travel to testing sites, wait in line, and takes 1-2 days to return results, leading to further spread of COVID through increased contact with other high-risk individuals.

On the contrary, testing via an Antigen Test Kit (ATK) can be done by everyone at home with the potential to test more frequently than the PCR test due to much cheaper cost. This means that ATK testing can be mixed into people’s daily lifestyle, but another underlying reason is that ATKs only show test results as positive only when an infected person is contagious. Another key advantage is the rapid results, which helps people identify risks quickly, limiting spread even faster.

A Harvard study revealed that widespread twice-weekly testing with a rapid but less sensitive test reduced the degree of infectiousness, or R0 (“R naught”), of the virus by 80%, while twice-weekly testing with a more sensitive PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, which takes up to 48 hours to return results, reduced infectiousness by only 58%. Rapid testing with ATK reduces infectiousness better than the slower, more sensitive PCR test.

The added benefit of at-home ATK testing is to limit further spread from traveling to/from and waiting at testing sites, as well as reducing the workload on healthcare professionals during this ongoing crisis in Thailand. According to how Slovakia deployed countrywide testing, if we can isolate infected individuals from the community by testing 2 times within a week, COVID spread was cut around 70%.

About Thailand Recovery Fund Phase 1

Thailand Recovery Fund recognizes the importance of providing access to cheap (and/or free) ATKs to solve the crisis at the source by limiting spread. We believe that preventing spread is the most important, most effective strategy to combat this crisis, which would lead to better health and economic outcomes for the entire country.

Our project therefore aims to achieve the following objectives:

1. To distribute free ATKs to 40,000 persons
2. To monitor the results of ATKs in real environments to measure its effectiveness in reducing COVID spread in Thai communities
3. To campaign for the government to recognize the importance and effectiveness of weekly testing, and propose suitable strategies to fight COVID
4. To facilitate importing, distribution, and sale of affordable but effective ATKs

Thailand Recovery Fund is currently fundraising to purchase and distribute 200,000 ATKs to low-income high-risk communities.

In addition, the results of this donation will be monitored by a team of researchers in a study titled “The impact of SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Testing Kit screening in the Bangkok community to prevent outbreaks” with around 10 communities receiving 8 kits each for twice-weekly testing and 30 communities receiving 4 kits each for weekly testing. This research project will be supervised by 5 researchers including:

1. Dr. Gasit Saksirisampant from Ramathibodi Hospital
2. Dr. Leshan Wannigama from Chulalongkorn University
3. Dr. Katika Akksilp from the Department of Medical Services
4. Mr. Soham Sankaran from Cornell University
5. Zero Covid Thailand 

A record system for this research is being conducted by Thai Care (www.thai.care) who will collect data and results of this study over a period of 2 months.

Target of Thailand Recovery Fund Phase 1
– 200,000 Rapid tests
– Expected cost: 50 THB per test
– Fundraising Goal 10,000,000 THB

Result from the previous stage

As a result, your donation to the Thailand Recovery Fund creates quick responses to several issues in the society. We believe that an effective help comes from an immediate response to the issues.

Thailand Recovery Fund has donated KN95 masks and PPEs to medical centers in Bangkok and other provinces all over Thailand to support doctors and nurses who work with Covid-19 patients.

Distrubution has been made to 82 medical centers in 32 provinces in Thailand.

– Cloth masks : 6,250

– KN95 masks : 54,450

– PPEs : 5,450

– High Flow Nasal Cannula : 1

Apart from these distributions, we also worked with SOS Earth to fund Children Care Centers in Chiang Mai that have to face highly polluted air with PM 2.5.

– Air Purifier : 100

More Information

The Thailand Recovery Fund will be operated and managed by Socialgiver and overseen by Yuvabadhana Foundation.