- Thailand has ordered the complete isolation of Phuket from the rest of the country.
- On July 1, Thailand opened the island to vaccinated international tourists without isolation. This is a milestone moment in Southeast Asia’s tourism industry.
- On July 28, Thailand recorded 16,533 Covid-19 cases every day. Less than 6% of the country’s population has been fully vaccinated.
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The Phuket experiment lasted 30 days.
On July 1, the Thai government launched a project called Phuket Sandbox. Opened up Phuket For international vaccinated tourists who have not been quarantined. On July 30, it announced that it would isolate the island from the rest of the country.
under Phuket SandboxTourists do not need to be quarantined on arrival, but they must stay in Phuket for at least 14 days before being allowed to travel to other parts of the country.All visitors must present Series files, Including entry certificate, vaccination certificate and negative RT-PCR test.
But now, from August 3, travelers from other provinces in Thailand will no longer be allowed to enter Phuket. Bangkok Post Report. However, overseas tourists will basically not be affected. Reuters.
This rule is equivalent to isolating Phuket from the rest of the country.
The Director-General of the Department of Disease Control (DDC) Kajornsak Kaewjaras said that the situation in Phuket will be monitored for two weeks to determine whether the Phuket Sandbox can be restarted according to the current parameters of the Washington Post. Insider has contacted the Tourism Authority of Thailand for comments.
Delft is an American who has lived in Asia for 20 years and retired in Phuket six months before the pandemic began. He told Insider that the government’s statement did not immediately cause any changes on the island.
“Domestic passengers can no longer come to Phuket, but because domestic flights from the red zone have been cancelled for about a week, even before that, Phuket only allowed fully vaccinated locals without any noticeable changes,” Ford said.
“Sandboxers have been fully vaccinated, mainly using mRNA vaccines, and tested four times,” Ford added. “The worry should not be that international travelers will transmit Covid-19 to locals; it should be the worry that locals will transmit Covid-19 to international travelers.”
The updated limit was issued on the occasion of the surge in Covid-19 cases in Thailand: On July 28, the country recorded a daily record of 16,533 cases, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) data show. It also continues to lag in vaccination: only 5.6% of the country’s population has been fully vaccinated. At the same time, in Phuket, the situation is quite different: by mid-July, more than 60% of the island’s population had been vaccinated. Bloomberg Report.
The United States announced on July 29 that it would send 2.5 million doses of vaccine were vaccinated in Thailand and Cambodia, 1.5 million doses of Pfizer drugs will arrive in Thailand on Friday. But the country is already facing a health crisis, A hospital on the verge of bankruptcy And Covid-19 patients were transferred to Sleeper train let them leave Bangkok.
At the beginning of this month, Insider interviewed long-term residents and locals in Phuket Regarding their reaction to the island’s reopening of tourism. They expressed a split sentiment: while some are proud of Phuket being the first area in Thailand to reopen to tourists, others worry that if another wave of Covid-19 breaks out, their future will be affected.
Pimchanok KhetARan, a 29-year-old sales executive who has lived in Phuket for seven years, said: “If there is another outbreak, what should we do? Close again? So what happens next.”
According to JHU data, to date, Thailand has recorded 543,000 Covid-19 cases and 4,397 deaths.
