Quarantine shortening proposed for certain situations

In an attempt to boost the economy, the National Communicable Disease Committee is proposing a shortening of quarantine periods for travellers under certain circumstances. The proposal was made in a meeting today of the committee with Minister of Public Health Anutin Charnvirakul chairing the meeting and vowing to pass on the plan to the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration.

The idea is to shorten quarantine lengths based on the risk of the traveller and the amount they are protected from Covid-19. It would apply to both domestic and international travellers in key popular tourist destinations. The plan calls for the following:

• Visitors arriving by land that have not been fully vaccinated will be required to quarantine for the full 14 days and undergo 2 RT-PCR tests during that time.
• Visitors who are only missing a proper vaccine certificate and arriving by air only will be subject to a 10-day quarantine and also be required to take an RT-PCR test at the start and end of their quarantine.
• Visitors who have been fully vaccinated with proper documentation will only need to quarantine for 7 days, again taking an RT-PCR test at both the start and finish of the quarantine.

Proponents of the plan observed that a shorter quarantine seemed reasonably safe, pointing at the Phuket Sandbox where just 101 international tourists have contracted Covid-19 out of nearly 9,500 total infections in the area, showing that local infections were a much bigger risk than quarantined foreign arrivals.

The proposal is aimed at stimulating the economy by increasing tourism by attracting more travellers who are turned off by a 2-week quarantine but might tolerate the shorter options. Officials were concerned about if Thailand was ready for it, so they intend on implementing the shorter quarantines in tourist areas based on their vaccination rates, hospital bed occupancy rate, and the amount of local Covid-19 infections in the region.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post