Lots of speculation, but little action, as reopening efforts stall in Thailand
Island Wrap #54: Pandemic edition for September 11-24, 2021
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September has been a month of speculation as Thai authorities consider easing some of the Covid-19 containment measures that have been in place for months. A curfew in the “dark-red” provinces might be shortened. More destinations might reopen to vaccinated inbound travelers with minimal quarantine. Some businesses might be able to open their doors for the first time since July or earlier.
The frustrating lack of answers is a reflection of a Covid-19 situation that remains fluid and severe in some parts of the country, even if the vaccination program has found consistent momentum and the nationwide coronavirus death toll has been on the decline over recent weeks. Despite these improvements, Thailand still faces many hurdles as it strives to shift from crisis to recovery.
The Covid-19 situation
Thailand sadly reported 2,102 Covid-19 deaths and 184,357 confirmed cases, or 13,168 per day on average, since my last pandemic update two weeks ago. 3,377 patients were in serious condition yesterday, including 743 on ventilators. All of these numbers represent improvements compared to the previous fortnight.
More than 601,000 vaccine doses were administered per day, on average, from September 10th to the 23rd. Just over 23% of the total population has been fully vaccinated, while 42% have received a first dose. A Dept. of Disease Control study found that 84.8% of those who died of Covid-19 from April 1st through September 9th had not been vaccinated, or had no vaccination records, while 14% had received one dose. 107 of those who died, or 0.8%, were fully vaccinated.
Data on the types of vaccines administered to the 107 fully inoculated patients who died was not released. Thailand’s vaccination program is now relying on vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinopharm, and Sinovac. The latter is often employed as a first dose, followed three weeks later by an AstraZeneca jab. Pre-booked Moderna vaccinations are expected to start next month.
Among the partially vaccinated are 2,000 schoolchildren, aged 10 to 18, who got their first doses of Sinopharm earlier this week. These were the first of roughly 108,000 Sinopharm doses and 4.5 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that are being allocated for children under 18 years old as part of an effort to reopen public schools in time for the start of the second semester in November.
Covid-19 is still wreaking havoc in many parts of the country. Venues that were recently locked down due to Covid-19 outbreaks include both a prison and a fresh market in Nakhon Si Thammarat; a construction site and related laborer housing in Pattaya; and two fishing villages in Hat Lek near Cambodia. Operations at Government House in the capital were affected after a senator tested positive along with two other officials and a member of the press corps.
A lockdown was also imposed on an Urak Lawoi (‘Sea People’) village in Phuket, a province where 3,316 confirmed cases and 34 deaths were reported over the last two weeks. More than 4,000 Covid-19 patients are receiving some form of medical care in Phuket despite a local vaccination rate of 74%. “The bed occupation rate has reached a critical point,” said Vachira Phuket Hospital director Chalermpong Suthonthaphol on September 16th, as reported by Bangkok Post.
The occupancy rate of Phuket’s regular hospital beds (i.e. not field hospitals or “hospitels”) stood at 83% this past Wednesday, with 35 of the 49 ICU beds occupied. Authorities have responded with mass testing and the launch of a booster vaccine program for the general public. “Patience is growing thin with the lack of credibility of any government reports about the current state of the Covid-19 situation in Phuket,” wrote the The Phuket News on September 12th.
Confirmed cases on Ko Samui fell to only 38 over the last two weeks, a number deemed low enough to close the local field hospital. Only eight cases were found on Ko Phangan while 63 surfaced on neighboring Ko Tao, many of them discovered through mass testing. As of early this week, Ko Tao had only a 36% vaccination rate as compared to 73% on Ko Samui and 66% on Ko Phangan.
Over in the eastern Gulf, confirmed cases on Ko Chang (Trat) spiked to 39 over the fortnight, while two more cases turned up on Ko Kut.
A lockdown of Ko Phi Phi ended yesterday despite the 82 additional cases that were found there over the last two weeks. Only five cases surfaced on Ko Lanta, but much of the rest of Krabi has been struggling with outbreaks. The province’s nine Covid-19 deaths over the last 14 days prompted the governor to shut down sporting facilities and lock down villages, including several in Khlong Thom.
Thousands of cases continue to be reported every day in Bangkok, though a full vaccination rate that has risen to 44% appears to be easing the situation in the capital. Vaccination rates are lower in Chonburi and Rayong, two heavily populated Gulf-coast provinces that reported 106 and 41 deaths, respectively, over the last two weeks. Daily cases in both have recently stood between 400 and 900.
Thailand’s deep Southern provinces were among the first to face serious outbreaks earlier this year, and some residents feel they’ve been neglected by the government, in terms of vaccine allocation, despite the high death rates and prolonged lockdowns they’ve endured. Narathiwat, for example, reported 4,789 cases and 63 deaths over the last 14 days. Only 19% of its local population is fully vaccinated.
Contrast that with Phang Nga, a province with a 41% vaccination rate that reported 840 cases and one death over the last two weeks. It has one of the lowest death tolls of all Southern provinces for the whole pandemic. While parts of Phang Nga are open to international tourists who have spent a week on neighboring Phuket, the border province of Narathiwat is among the least touristed in Thailand.
In other pandemic news:
What children — and parents — can expect from Thailand’s vaccination drive for kids — Thai PBS World:
“Vaccination is not mandatory, it will be done on a voluntary basis.”
Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are leaving their zero-Covid policies behind, but they aren’t ready to open up, experts warn — Jessie Yeung and Ben Westcott for CNN:
“Jean Garito, a diving school operator in Thailand’s Phuket island, said small- and medium-sized businesses are desperate for borders to reopen … ‘If governments are not able to really compensate businesses for their loss in the short and long term, then yes — if they don’t fully reopen, we are all doomed.’”
The price of “living with Covid-19” — Ken Lohatepanont for Thai Enquirer (opinion):
“If Singapore, with 80% of its population fully vaccinated, is hesitating with reopening, is it responsible for Thailand to go ahead at this time?”
Thai civil society steps up as Bangkok’s public healthcare buckles under Covid-19 — Pichayada Promchertchoo for CNA:
“For Bangkok residents, each day begins with reports of thousands of new infections. But for Kamonlak ‘Mahmud’ Anusornweeracheewin, a former inmate on death row, his day starts with a race against time to save as many lives as he can.”
This video from Thairath shows the rush for vaccines in Kantang, Trang province, on a public holiday yesterday in which single-day, nationwide vaccinations reportedly topped 1 million for the first time ever.
Containment measures
Little changed on the restriction front over the last two weeks, but a slight easing of the rules appears to be in store for October. Yesterday, the National Security Council (NSC) proposed pushing the start of a nightly curfew from 9:00 to 10:00 PM in the 29 “dark-red” provinces. Also under consideration: permitting theaters and museums to open, and live music to be performed in restaurants.
Don’t get your dancing shoes out yet, however, as all changes must first be approved by the Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA). There had been rumors that this powerful decision-making body would be dissolved along with an emergency decree that’s been in effect since early 2020. Instead, the controversial state of emergency was extended for yet another two months.
Quite a bit of movement is starting to happen on the domestic tourism front — in the offices of tourism officials if not so much on the ground as of yet. The “We Travel Together” tourism stimulus program was dusted off for a third time, with the TAT reporting more than 165,000 registrations for government-funded travel discounts during the first day of the program’s re-establishment this week. A separate campaign from the Thai Hotels Association aims to entice domestic travelers to visit Phuket, Phang Nga, Surat Thani and Krabi provinces in the near future.
Domestic travel to most destinations now requires vaccination — though often only one dose if it’s the AstraZeneca vaccine — as well as a negative Covid-19 test result from the previous 72 hours. This is the official line, at least. Several people have told me that they’ve crossed multiple provincial borders by car and were never stopped. But there’s always a risk of being denied entry if not following guidelines as decreed by each provincial governor, and the rules tend to be strictly enforced for air travel and boarding ferries to islands like Ko Samui and Ko Phangan.
Phuket is fully reopening to domestic travel on October 1st, though again, with vaccination and testing rules enforced. Authorities there “deferred” a decision on permitting alcohol service in restaurants, but it does appear that alcohol could be legally drank in Ko Samui’s restaurants from next month.
Ko Lipe is set to reopen to domestic tourists on October 15th following a lockdown that was imposed in response to a Covid-19 outbreak back in August. Perhaps its leaders were inspired by nearby Pulau Langkawi, an island across the border in Malaysia that’s being given a test run for that country’s tourism reboot. Back in Thailand, signs of domestic tourism life returned to the eastern Gulf as more than 1,000 travelers reportedly boarded ferries to Ko Kut yesterday.
A key question on the minds of Thai tourism analysts and stakeholders is whether the vaccination and testing requirements that many provinces and islands have imposed on travelers are here to stay, or if they’ll eventually be drawn back to enable the freedom of movement that was enjoyed before the pandemic. If the rules stick, we could see radical changes to the nature of travel in Thailand.
International tourism reopening
Phuket Sandbox-style programs that enable vaccinated travelers to enter Thailand with minimal quarantine are planned for Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Hua Hin, and Cha-am. But as Erich Parpart explains for Thai Enquirer, these proposals have been mired by misleading, often-contradictory statements that sometimes border on petty oneupmanship among government officials.
Despite numerous articles from the international press that proclaim an October launch based on overzealous remarks from Thai tourism officials, none of these additional Sandbox-style programs have been approved yet. In fact, all of them have been delayed until November at the earliest. I won’t publish another full article on inbound tourism reopening until at least one of these proposed reopening programs is approved by the CCSA, with firm dates and rules. While I’d like to think that approval would hinge on local vaccination rates above 70%, that is unlikely.
In the meantime, approving a proposal to standardize rules and processes across all “sandbox” areas would be a big step in the right direction.
Another idea is to permit inbound travelers to visit any of 21 provinces after they’ve stayed a specified amount of time in a primary “sandbox” destination, a tactic that’s already been deployed on a smaller scale via the “7+7” additions to the Phuket Sandbox. Trang, Ko Phayam and Ko Chang (Trat) are a few of the places where local leaders and communities intend to welcome international travelers who enter the country through sandbox programs in the coming months.
But these plans could ultimately become moot if Thai authorities stick to a long-standing goal of fully reopening the country to vaccinated inbound travelers in time for 2022. My advice to friends who live abroad and are keen to visit Thailand for leisure is to wait and see how things shake out over the next two or three months. The experiences of a pair of Canadian tourists who are in the midst of a six-week trip show how frustrating travel in Thailand can be at the moment.
Have Thailand’s existing inbound tourism reopening programs been successful? The answer to that depends on who you ask.
Supporters point out that only 91 of the first 30,000 travelers who entered the country via the Phuket Sandbox tested positive for Covid-19. On the other hand, some small business owners in Phuket are complaining that they’ve received little of the financial benefits from the program. Meanwhile, Ko Samui officials are planning to relax the rules for the Samui Plus program after finding that only 786 international travelers took advantage of it over its first two months in action.
Limitations on inbound travel from India and seven other countries have been lifted, enabling their residents to obtain certificates of entry and skip a lengthy quarantine when entering Thailand. For anyone not entering via a Sandbox program, for example because they haven’t been vaccinated, the mandatory quarantine might soon be reduced from 14 to between seven and 10 days.
But the inclusion of Thailand on the UK's travel red list and curbs on outbound travel from China and Australia, to name a few key source markets, continues to thwart Thai recovery efforts. Combined with the Thai government’s indecision and confusing rules for domestic travel, the result of these types of restrictive travel policies in other countries is enduring pain in the Thai travel industry. 🌴
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"My advice to friends who live abroad and are keen to visit Thailand for leisure is to wait and see how things shake out over the next two or three months." Copy that. Thanks.
Finally had a chance to read this. "Surreal" doesn't even begin to describe the Covid situation...