Thais will have to find another way to cool off this year after the government called off the annual water festival that celebrates the Buddhist New Year to curb the outbreak of the new coronavirus. Thailand usually celebrates its traditional new year or Songkran from April 13 to 15, when crowds pack the streets in a boisterous festival, spraying water guns and hurling water off pick-up trucks in a free-for-all water fight. Thailand has reported 2,579 confirmed cases and 40 fatalities since the outbreak began in January, with over half the cases in Bangkok, a spokesman of the government’s Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration, Taweesin Wisanuyothin said on Monday.
