Skift Take
More indications of Omicron subsiding. Thai authorities are mulling whether to drop quarantine requirements yet again for vaccinated travelers going into the nation.
Tom Lowry
Thailand is thinking about bringing back a quarantine waiver for vaccinated visitors, its health minister stated on Monday, as part of a proposed alleviating of some COVID-19 procedures later on this week.
Thailand reopened to immunized foreign visitors in November to help an important tourism market that collapsed throughout nearly 18 months of strict entry policies. It saw about 200,000 arrivals last year, compared to nearly 40 million in 2019.
The “Test and Go” policy, which enables visitors to skip the necessary quarantine if they test negative on arrival, was suspended late in December over issues about the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variation.
“We will propose steps that can be done securely and are clinically sound,” Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told Reuters.
“If approved it can begin by Feb. 1,” he said of the quarantine waiver.
Thailand tape-recorded 6,929 brand-new COVID-19 infections and 13 deaths on Monday. More than 2.3 million individuals have been contaminated in general, with 22,000 deaths.
(Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Editing by Martin Petty)
This article was from Reuters and was legally certified through the Market Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected]
< img src="https://pixel.welcomesoftware.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT0zY2EyYjJhMDc3YTkxMWVjODMxYzQ2MGY2ODM0YWVlMg==" alt ="" width="1" height="1"/ >