Alcohol sales are to be banned in restaurants in the Thai capital, Bangkok, from tomorrow, while entertainment venues will be shuttered across the country for two weeks.
It comes as Thailand recorded its fourth consecutive day of more than 1,000 new cases, with spiralling infections linked to a nightlife district of the capital Bangkok earlier this month.
In the past 10 days, the national infection total has jumped from 29,900 to more than 40,500 - the sharp increase probably due to a highly infectious variant of the virus originally found in Britain. "Nearly 10,000 new cases were found within this week," said Taweesin Visanuyothin, a spokesman for Thailand's Covid-19 task force.