Coronavirus: Thailand welcomes 39 Chinese tourists; New Zealand sees two community cases
- The Chinese travellers arrived in Bangkok on a ‘Special Tourist Visa’ programme aimed at restoring the battered tourism sector
- New Zealand is seeing an outbreak among a group of foreign fishermen; a fast and cheap paper-based Covid-19 test will soon be available in India
The visitors who arrived at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport are pioneers in a “Special Tourist Visa” programme devised by Thai authorities to restore step by step a sector of the economy that welcomed almost 40 million foreign visitors last year and by some estimates accounts for more than 10 per cent of the country’s GDP.
China was a natural choice for restarting tourism. Thailand was one of the top overseas destinations for Chinese tourists in 2019, when they accounted for by far the largest number of visitors to Thailand by nationality. Just as crucial is that China has largely contained the virus domestically, in sharp contrast to other countries.
Thailand has had only a handful of domestic cases since June, and China’s few local outbreaks have dissipated quickly after authorities took steps such as testing entire cities and quarantining communities with potential exposure.
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Thailand’s newest visitors cannot freely traipse around the country, however. Under the programme approved by the Thai cabinet in September, foreign tourists who commit to a stay of at least 30 days are issued 90-day visas that can be renewed twice.
After arriving, they must stay in government-approved quarantine at a hotel or hospital for 14 days and prove they have long-term accommodation. They must have special insurance policies, undergo pre-departure testing for the virus and download an official coronavirus-tracking application for use during their stay.
An operations manager at Suvarnabhumi Airport said it is ready for tourists with a testing system that gives the result within 90 minutes. He said arrivals have to go through three thermal scans as they make their way through the airport.
At least two other flights from China are expected later this month, and Thailand’s tourism ministry expects about 400 foreign visitors in early November. Future flights may land in destinations other than Bangkok, such as the southern resort island of Phuket.
New Zealand sees 25 new cases
A total of 235 crew from Russia and Ukraine were on the flight chartered by three fishing companies. Before leaving Moscow, they were supposed to have self-isolated for two weeks and tested negative for the virus. One of the companies said it uses foreign crew because New Zealand workers either are not adequately trained or willing to do the work.
This takes New Zealand’s total confirmed cases to 1,556, said the Director General of health, Ashley Bloomfield.
One rare reinfection in Melbourne
Australian authorities say they are treating a Covid-19 case in the city of Melbourne as a rare reinfection. The only coronavirus case reported in the former hotspot of Victoria state on Tuesday had also tested positive in July.
Victoria Premier Dan Andrews said Wednesday an expert panel had decided to classify the case as a reinfection rather than shedding viral remnants of the July infection. Andrews says the classification reflected “an abundance of caution” rather than conclusive evidence. He assumed further testing would be conducted into the case in search of a definitive result.
Melbourne has been in lockdown since early July, but restrictions in Australia’s second-largest city are easing this week as daily infection tallies remain low. Victoria reported three new cases on Wednesday. The state’s second wave peaked at 725 new infections in a day in early August.
Singapore to trial rapid antigen tests
Phase Three, which may start by year-end, would allow the following easing of measures, the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday.
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Singapore will also trial coronavirus tests for participants in larger-scale gatherings using antigen rapid tests, or ARTs, which can return “fairly accurate” results within half an hour. While the cost of ART’s is not yet finalised, it will be cheaper than conventional PCR tests, said Kenneth Mak, the health ministry’s director of medical services.
Pre-event testing trials starting mid-October at business gatherings, wedding receptions, live performances and sports events will enable the Ministry of Health to identify a model that can be implemented more widely and allow more large-scale events to resume eventually, it said.
While cost of the ART’s has not yet been finalised, it will be considerably cheaper than PCR tests, Mak said. Only participants who test negative will be allowed to participate in the event. The Singapore International Energy Week next week will be among the first business events in the pilot programme.
Paper-based coronavirus test in India
A fast and cheap paper-based coronavirus test will soon be available across India, with scientists hopeful it will help turn the tide on the pandemic in the country.
The locally developed Feluda, named for a detective in a famous Indian novel series, resembles a home pregnancy paper-strip test and delivers results within an hour. Researchers are optimistic that its low cost and ease of use can help stem the pathogen’s spread in poor and remote areas.
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“This test doesn’t require any sophisticated equipment or highly trained manpower,” said co-creator Souvik Maiti, a scientist at New Delhi’s CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB). “There are lots of remote parts of India where you do not have any sophisticated laboratories … (The test) will be much easier to deploy; it will have much more penetration.”
India currently diagnoses Covid-19 with either RT-PCR tests, which are highly accurate but require advanced lab machinery, or antigen tests, which can give results in just a few minutes at a limited cost but with significantly lower accuracy.
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Feluda, like other inexpensive paper-based tests being developed in other countries, claims to combine the accuracy of the PCR test with the accessibility of the antigen kits. It uses the gene-editing technique CRISPR-Cas9, which recently earned its inventors Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Feluda has been granted government regulatory approval and Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said last week it could be rolled out in the next few weeks by Indian conglomerate Tata Group. The price has not been released, but local media said it could cost around 500 rupees (US$6.80) – around a fifth of what a PCR test costs in New Delhi.
Philippines travel ban lifted
The Philippines has lifted a ban on non-essential foreign trips by Filipinos, but the immigration bureau said the move did not immediately spark large numbers of departures for tourism and leisure.
The government has gradually eased restrictions on international and domestic travel as part of efforts to bolster the economy, which slipped into recession in the second quarter following months of lockdown and quarantine to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Travellers to other countries are required to show confirmed round trip tickets, travel and health insurance, a declaration acknowledging the risks of travel and trip delays and a medical test within 24 hours of departure that clears them of Covid-19.
Aside from tedious pre-departure requirements, many countries still restrict the entry of travellers from nations with high number of coronavirus infections, including the Philippines. The Department of Health has reported more than 360,000 confirmed cases, the second-highest in Southeast Asia, with at least 6,690 deaths.
Japan’s birth rate set to drop due to pandemic
Japan expects to see the number of newborns drop sharply next year, as the number of pregnancies reported across the country fell 11.4 per cent in the three months from May compared to a year earlier due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, health ministry officials said on Tuesday.
A government tally, seen by Kyodo News, underscores fears that the pandemic will worsen the nation’s already low birth rate. It marks the first such figures released by the government, linking a drop in the number of births to the impact of the coronavirus. Japan, home to one of the world’s longest-living populaces, is also one of the most aged societies, with the highest percentage of elderly people anywhere in the world.
The nation’s dwindling number of newborns fell below 1 million for the first time in 2016 and fell to a record low of 865,000 last year. There are concerns that the number could dip below 800,000 next year if the current trend continues.
Measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have resulted in restrictions in hospital visits and presented difficulties for women who wish to return to their hometown to give birth. Combined with bleak economic prospects caused by a spike in unemployment, it is believed that many couples have decided postponed having children.
The latest data shows reported pregnancies were down by 26,331 between May and July from a year earlier, highlighting the impact of the coronavirus since that time.
All 47 prefectures logged a decline, with Yamaguchi Prefecture seeing the biggest fall at 29.7 per cent, followed by Aomori Prefecture at 23.7 per cent and Ishikawa Prefecture at 22.5 per cent.
Reporting by Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse, Kyodo
