Coronavirus: Thailand ends quarantine for vaccinated visitors from China, US, Singapore, others
- From Monday, fully-inoculated travellers will be able to freely tour Thai beaches, temples and tropical islands after testing negative for Covid-19 on arrival
- Elsewhere, Singapore is boosting the number of ICU beds, while hundreds of workers at seafood firms in south Vietnam have tested positive for Covid-19
Thailand is ending quarantine for vaccinated visitors from more than 60 countries including China, India, Japan, Singapore and the US, in the biggest reopening gamble in Asia and one that could mark a turning point for the revival of mass tourism during the pandemic.
From Monday, fully-vaccinated travellers will be able to freely tour Thailand’s sandy beaches, temples and tropical islands after testing negative for Covid-19 on arrival.
Inoculated visitors from countries not on the list can travel to Bangkok and 16 other regions, but they will be confined to their initial destination for the first seven days before being allowed to travel elsewhere.
It is the biggest step Thailand has taken to welcome back a slice of the nearly 40 million visitors it hosted the year before the pandemic, and is billed as a “fight to win foreign tourists” as countries from Australia to the UK also loosen Covid-19 curbs.
A successful Thai experiment could help salvage its battered economy and serve as a model for countries wary of a virus resurgence from reopenings.
“We’re not expecting the rooms to be full overnight, but it’s a great first step,” said John Blanco, general manager at luxury hotel Capella Bangkok. “All countries are taking the same posture – that is, we need to learn to live with Covid-19. It’s a general theme around the world.”
To boost the confidence of tourists and the public, Thailand is linking the reopening to a higher vaccination rate, which “is a measured approach that has a lot of logic to it”, according to Amar Lalvani, chairman of US boutique hotel operator Standard International.