Chaisit Thepchatree said on Thursday (February 27) that one suspected case was registered on Wednesday – a man who recently visited an at-risk country – but he proved to be free of the virus.
The false rumour appears to have stemmed from the news earlier this week that a married couple in Bangkok had been confirmed as infected after their return from Hokkaido, Japan, and then passed the virus on to their granddaughter, boosting the number of confirmed cases in Thailand to 40.
Whoever started the rumour claimed that 22 other people who’d been on the same tour of Hokkaido had returned home to Rayong and had not been quarantined.
It was these people who’d ended up in Rayong Hospital, so the story went.