Thailand Sold Itself as a Paradise Covid Retreat. No One Came Bloomberg 1/17/2021 Randy Thanthong-Knight
(Bloomberg) It’s hard to imagine a more luxurious place to spend two weeks of quarantine than the Anantara Phuket Suites & Villas in Thailand, where visitors are pampered in private residences that can have their own pool and courtyard.
Yet more than three months after the resort and more than a hundred like it reopened to extended-stay travelers in an attempt to revive Thailand’s battered economy, foreign arrivals have failed to meet even rock-bottom expectations. Just 346 overseas visitors have entered the country on average each month on special visas since October, according to the Thailand Longstay Company, which helps facilitate the program. That’s well below the government’s target of about 1,200 and a tiny fraction of the more than 3 million who came before the pandemic.
It’s hard to imagine a more luxurious place to spend two weeks of quarantine than the Anantara Phuket Suites & Villas in Thailand, where visitors are pampered in private residences that can have their own pool and courtyard.
The Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) on Sunday played down a proposal that free Covid-19 treatment for infected gamblers and illegal returnees be scrapped.
Covid vaccine progress needs investment
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In normal times, a vaccine is a health product that works its way to protect a person from a disease. But in the age of new normal , vaccines can define a country s development level.
Advanced countries such as the US and UK started rolling out vaccination programmes last month as authorised agencies approved Pfizer s and Moderna s vaccine for emergency use, while developing countries have to wait longer as available vaccines of the two pharma giants are mostly reserved. Thailand is likely to get vaccines from AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, around mid-year.
But after the Samut Sakhon virus outbreak, the government had to order two million doses from Sinovac, a Beijing-based company, with the first lot being delivered next month.
Red Cross backs use of rapid testing kits
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published : 12 Dec 2020 at 08:00 Thiravat: Sets out advantages
Thiravat Hemachudha, head of the Thai Red Cross Emerging Infectious Disease Health Science Centre, on Friday threw his support behind the use of rapid test kits to screen people for Covid-19 infection.
His call for the use of rapid test kits came after a spike in Covid-19 transmissions brought on by illegal border crossings.
According to Dr Thiravat, rapid test kits, which detect antibodies and give a diagnosis with initial screening taking only 10-15 minutes, can fill the gap when screening large numbers of people for Covid-19.