Tourism

Health Minister says quarantine could be reduced to 10 days, maybe eventually zero

Published

Thursday, October 22, 2020 09:26

PHOTO: WHO/Ploy Phutpheng

Health officials are ready to reduce the mandatory quarantine period for foreign tourists, provided other relevant bodies agree. The current quarantine period is set at 14 days, but the Public Health Minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, says this could be reduced to 10. He adds that if the reduction is successful, quarantine could be further reduced, eventually reaching a point where quarantine is no longer a requirement.

“The truth is, the Public Health Ministry is ready for the change, but other relevant agencies still have requested time to adjust. So, we have to wait and work together. The Department of Disease Control proposed reducing quarantine to 10 days to begin with. I have said that if we are confident, we do not have to be afraid since the goal is finding the safest period for quarantine. If we find a good method, it may be reduced to 5, 4, 3 days, or even none.”

On Tuesday, Thailand welcomed the first group of foreign tourists to arrive in the Kingdom since borders were shut in late March. The Chinese visitors, who arrived from Shanghai, are all in 14-day quarantine, with all of them testing negative for Covid-19 so far. Once quarantine is over, they will be free to travel around, but their movements will be tracked via an app they had to download on arrival.

While a reduction in the quarantine period may go some way to encouraging more tourists to come, Anutin is not in favour of removing all entry restrictions. With travel restrictions lifted between many European countries, Covid-19 cases are once more on an upward trajectory, with officials concerned about what the approaching winter months will bring. Anutin points to the success so far of Thailand’s quarantine programme, stressing the importance of keeping Covid-19 out, particularly in high-risk communities such as the border with Myanmar in Tak province.

SOURCE: Nation Thailand

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22 Comments

Rasputin

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 9:57 am

Dream On

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Toby Andrews

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 10:16 am

The hotels like the idea of quarantine at the start. Why not. Guests compelled to stop for 14 days, and the hotels added on two more unjustified days, just as a scam charge.
They could also supply all the food for these trapped guests, and charge a over the top for everything else, such as mini bar prices. Laundry. Room service.
Besides, only so many hotels had permission and the had a monopoly, or so they thought.
However, few people would come and tolerate this quarantine, and worse, quarantine kept out thousands of visitors.
The end result was: no big bucks from quarantine, and the hotel was empty because of quarantine.
Thailand has to take the risk, and it is an acceptable risk. The chances of catching this virus is tiny in relation to the population.
I see now even the health minister is seeing it this way.

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- Jake Pattaya
  
  Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 12:39 pm
  
  Acceptable risk for you Tony, but not for 99% of 60 mln Thais. Thailand is virus free and 99% of Thais want to keep it that way. Why won’t you finally understand that 3/4 of Europe is again under lockdown most of businesses closed and that is what is killing economy, and this is because people like you! You keep bragging about letting virus in without even looking at economic consequences. What percentage of the economy is closed in Thailand compare to Europe at this moment? Stop asking bar girls for opinion and ask some other Thais, there is a whole world out there except that bar you used to drink!
  
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  - Latecomer
    
    Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 5:17 pm
    
    Do you know how to compare anything to anything? In Thailand there are in average 20 000 /twenty thousand/ road deaths every year. Every year. 20 000. How acceptable is risk being on Thai roads? But, nobody considers nor proposes to stop the traffic altogether “to save lives”.
    And now Covid had 59 /fifty nine/ fatalities this year.
    Can you compare the risks of 59 to 20 000?
    
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  - Mike Frenchie
    
    Friday, October 23, 2020 at 4:59 am
    
    you forget the 20－25% of people living off tourism… (plus black economy). They will be starving soon….
    
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    - Issan John
      
      Monday, October 26, 2020 at 8:53 am
      
      20 – 25% of Thais are not living off foreign tourism, directly or indirectly.
      
      This is simply unsupported, uninformed and baseless nonsense.
      
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      - rr
        
        Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 6:08 am
        
        at least 8% of gdp comes from tourist. maybe 20% is too much, but about 5 millions people, including secondaries, are realistically involved. let alone that their money geherate further income for others.
  - rr
    
    Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 6:09 am
    
    thailand is not virus free, there is simply an extremely low test ratio.
    
    Log in to Reply
preesy chepuce

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 11:26 am

sounds more like a countdown than anything based on science.

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Paulnou

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 11:28 am

test before, upon arrival, 3 to 5 days later, tracing, that is more than enough to stop quarantine and bring some important part of the economy with no damages. Sve suicides lives, get back jobs…..

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- Jyrett
  
  Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 11:51 am
  
  So do these c19 test only recognize c19 strain or do they trigger on all the other 5 covid strains (the common flue)when testing
  
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  - The Thaiger & The Nation
    
    Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 1:37 pm
    
    The common flu is NOT a strain of Covid-19, nor is it a coronavirus
    
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- Issan John
  
  Monday, October 26, 2020 at 9:10 am
  
  “no damages”?
  
  Testing isn’t good enough to allow your solution yet – it simply wouldn’t be effective.
  
  14 days quarantine is still far from a 100% guarantee, but it’s close enough to work – the more you reduce it, the more risk you take. It’s a simple equation.
  
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  - biochemist
    
    Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 6:05 am
    
    Wrong. Antigen rapid test is very effective and can be confirmed by pcr when positive test is found. no need for quarantine for negatives.
    
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Nipral

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 12:34 pm

How are they gonna make money with zero day quarantine ?

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Jordan Dewachter

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 1:54 pm

Fact is that the current Thai approach is a success, but it wrecks tourism. The western approach is a disaster, it wrecks tourism too, and all the rest of the economy, plus adds an out of control epidemic and health crisis. Would be dumb to now open for tourism and wreck everything completelly.

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Andrew

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 7:02 pm

Hurray! Thailand’s tourism and economy is saved. 39 Chinese ‘tourists’ arrived. The good Times are back. How ridiculous!!!

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Andrzej

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 7:10 pm

Covid killed 59 in Thailand, out of 70,000,000. That’s 0.00008%. Good reason to panic, kill the economy and destroy lifes of millions. 20,000 dead in road accidents.That’s ok, nobody cares. Hmm.

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EdwardV

Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 11:04 pm

Let’s not forget the Chinese arriving are not tourists. They are people returning to run their Thai businesses, check on their properties and return to their families living in Thailand. They are not tourists. To make it even more clear, yesterday China reaffirmed the fact their citizens are banned from traveling outside of China for tourism. There is an article to that effect over at the BP. If Chinese tourists can’t come to Thailand , why reduce the quarantine? Could it be the fact the Thai government knows the economy is slowly dying, that personal debt levels are skyrocketing? Why else take the risk?

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West Tiger

Friday, October 23, 2020 at 12:34 am

With no Chinese tour groups coming here for at least a year, Thailand has to do something to get Farangs back, but asking Farangs to jump through hoops to get a visa is not one of then a they will go to other countries where it’s a lot easier to get a visa.
Thailand has really shot itself in the foot when it comes to Farang tourists

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- Issan John
  
  Monday, October 26, 2020 at 9:04 am
  
  So what’s the big advantage of allowing “Farangs” in, which will inevitably mean that Thailand will have to go down the same route as Farangland by imposing lockdowns and then closing its borders, affecting the rest of the economy as it has in Farangland and forcing the country into debt to pay for the sick, isolating and unemployed?
  
  Who benefits?
  
  WHO?
  
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rr

Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 7:33 pm

these two things are as comparable as apples vs guns. stop take road accidents as an example. road accidents are not transmissible diseases.

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Maya Taylor

A seasoned writer, with a degree in Creative Writing. Over ten years' experience in producing blog and magazine articles, news reports and website content.

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