Starting next month, visitors to the Kingdom of Thailand who have been vaccinated will have their mandatory quarantine period halved.
Thailand To Shorten Quarantine For Vaccinated Travelers
At a press conference on Monday, Anutin Charnviranku, Thailand’s Public Health Minister, explained:
“Foreigners traveling to Thailand with vaccination certificates in accordance with the requirements of each brands, will need to quarantine for only seven days.”
Under the update:
- Visitors who have been vaccinated within the last three months will only need to spend seven days in quarantine
- A negative COVID-19 test not older than three days prior to departure must still be presented
- Visitors who have not been vaccinated will have to quarantine for 10 days (instead of 14)
- Visitors from Africa must continue to quarantine for 14 days
- All visitors must continue to stay in government-prescribed quarantine hotels, though visitors do have discretion on the quality of the hotel and are responsible for all expenses during the stay
Thailand has carefully controlled COVID-19, reporting only 26,000 cases and 85 deaths. But its border closures have decimated the tourism sector, leading to economic recession and staggering job losses and business closures.
To put this in context, prior to the pandemic Thailand welcomed 40 million visitors a year. Last year, it welcomed a tiny fraction of that after the March shutdown.
When Will Thailand Waive Quarantine Requirements?
At the press conference, Anutin suggested that the country could fully re-open by October if its vaccination drive is successful:
- Currently less than 28,000 Thais have been vaccinated
- Almost all are medical workers and used the Chinese vaccine
- Thailand has ordered 61 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine
- Mass inoculations are set to begin in June
- Once more than 70% of medical workers and “at-risk” citizens are vaccinated, quarantine requirements could be lifted
- This is expected by October
CONCLUSION
Thailand will loosen quarantine requirements starting on April 1, 2021. Those who have been vaccinated in the last 90 days will only have to quarantine for seven days while those who have not been vaccinated will need to quarantine for 10 days. By October, if vaccination efforts are successful, we may see an elimination of the quarantine requirement for those who have been vaccinated.
@ Matthew — This will do approximately zero to boost tourism. They should at least let people choose their hotel.
@Gene, people get to choose their hotels.
Yikes, I really hope they get rid of the quarantine by end of September. I finally booked my trip that I had to cancel last year. I booked to go there end of September. Heading to Taipei, Bali and Thailand if things are open up but will cancel if I have to quarantine.
This is ridiculous. Who would go to Thailand under these rules? You got a vaccine or you got Covid and isolated for 10 days then you are free to go.
Thailand is attractive, but not seven days worth. How do I prove I’ve been vaccinated?
lol reduction of quarantine time by 3 days for vaccinated people.
I suppose this is a joke?
What’s the point of taking the vaccine if one still needs to quarantine?
For the average Joe with 3 weeks of vacation time per year, spending 1 week for quarantine does not make sense and this will not boost tourism at all.
The only way to boost tourism is to have no quarantine at all for vaccinated people.
My biggest challenge with planning a family travel until all this pandemic is over is not really related to concern of getting the virus (we all got is at my household anyway and survived), flying or staying at hotels but really about the overall experience of the trip. I don’t want to travel to a place and then all the main attractions are closed or have restricted access. Restaurants I want to try are closed. Retail stores are closed. Museums are closed. Or even if open you will have gigantic lines since they have to keep the number of people visiting low. Imagine going to Rome for the first time and not been able to visit the Vatican. Or going to Paris and not been able to visit the Louvre. Unless you are planing to go to the beach, which still may have restrictions, I would wait until we can really enjoy traveling again.
USA- rapidly approaching herd immunity. Realistically, the CDC has stated that testing has caught less than 7x the number of actual infections, with the possibility as high as 10x. Arguably, this puts the published positive test number of 29,000,000 far closer to between 203 and 290 million. Let’s be drab and say 180 million (some double positives, false positives, etc etc). Add in the nearly 60 million children under the age of 15 in the USA who pose little risk of transmission (relatively speaking- and the ‘science’ does clearly prove this with schools) and the rapidly approaching figure of 50 million vaccinated (the vast majority of which are in the highest risk elder category and co-mobility category). That puts the realistic total of people who present a low risk of transmission around 290 million (or 230 million if you subscribe to the unscientific theory children are a major risk of transmission). 230 million is 70% of the population, and at the low levels of herd immunity, easily exampling the near-exponential crash in cases post-January. Certain countries will fare with a longer experience with COVID as prolonged vaccination drives via importation and goals for near zero cases restrict reopening. Vaccine passports will never take hold, the differentiation in paperwork and ease of forgery makes it COVID theater at best. Open society and personal risk choices is the inevitable end. Nevertheless, fun summer in the USA here we come (unless you still wanna lock away indoors, thats 100% your right as an America). The rest of us, are heading to beach, cracking some beers, and throwing away the masks.
It’s an improvement. For some markets , notably Europe and Scandinavia, there might be some attraction. It’s not uncommon for tourists from these regions to spend the great bulk of their Thailand vacations in resorts/hotels. Indeed some never leave the property. While that’s more likely to be true of the peak season ( Dec- Mar, ie the height of the northern winter) it could have some appeal over the next few months.
Of course it’s not going to appeal much to those intent on getting out and about…
As a healthcare worker I got my second dose in January. Basically I’m being told by Thailand (and New York for that matter) that my vaccine’s useless.
Sad!
@Pete
Your vaccine is NOT useless: it protects YOU. What is not yet sufficiently clear is whether it stops you from acquiring the virus, even unknowingly, and passing it on to others ( although the preliminary data is encouraging). Hence the abundance of caution in these early days.