Brunolem

11 minutes ago, Poet said:

Actually, right now, only 38.57% of the US population is fully-vaccinated (2 doses of Pfizer or Moderna, or 1 dose of J&J).
 

Israel has only fully-vaccinated 59.07% of its population but, apparently, this is good enough to achieve the "zero covid" level of less than 100 infections per million.

By the end of June, that is probably where there UK will be.

 

Well, some poorer countries lagging does not mean that Thailand cannot open to the richer countries.
 

I am not clear on what is happening in the US, but it is possible that they are simply doing more testing than Thailand. I would hope that their numbers will improve significantly over the next month or so.

Meanwhile, the figures in Israel and the UK are terrific. Based on the types of vaccine they are using, I expect all the EU countries to achieve similar figures once they recover from the EU bureaucrats' inexplicable 3-month delay in ordering anything.

 

No one is suggesting that Thailand is going to snap back to 40 million tourists per year. What I am saying is that they can keep their tourist industry on life support by opening up to certain countries when it becomes biologically safe to do so. They then use the same criteria to determine when other countries can return to non-quarantined visits, allowing them to ramp back up in a measured way.

 

Well, Russia is a very big county so, yeah, it will take time to vaccinate enough people to slow the spread of the virus and reduce active cases. I gather Sputnik has had some scaling problems. The important part, however, is that they at least have an effecitve vaccine.
 

The vast majority of people who want to travel are waiting until they can get vaccinated, for their own safety.

Among people who do enjoy travel, especially long-distrace, they will disproportionately accept a vaccine when offered one. Most of these people, once vaccinated, would like to thing that the person sitting next to them has made the same effort. Some airlines are already touting their crews as being 100% vaccinated. There will almost certainly be a race among airlines to establish themselves as the covid-safe option. Once vaccine passports are introduced in June, switching to such a policy may actually be necessary to main booking levels.

This is similar to the last few airlines that allowed smoking, before it became law - while there were a hard core of smokers who might become loyal customers, any airline that became know as "the smokers' airline" would lose out on the majority of mainstream customers. There is no financial incentive for any airline to become "the Covid airline".

 

As explained by another member, the problem is that Thailand is structured for mass tourism, and that it will lose lots of money if it opens to only a selected few tourists.

Thailand is not the Maldives.

Also don't forget that Thailand has yet to talk about removing the COE and the mandatory insurance which by itself will discourage many potential vaccinated tourists.

If things move with the usual bureaucratic speed, removing the red tape could take years...

As for the airlines, there is a big difference between temporarily not doing something (smoking) and permanently do something (getting a shot).

Yet it is likely that most if not all airlines will accept only vaccinated passengers, at least for long haul flights.

I doubt that those who oppose covid vaccination, and even more the concept of a vaccine pass, will change their minds for the only purpose of travelling far away from home.

We will see soon enough...in fact, probably not so soon...

22 minutes ago, Poet said:

Most of the citizens in the US, UK, and Israel, and most of the over-50s in the EU will be fully-vaccinated by the end of June. We can already see dramatic reductions in the active case numbers in the UK. Israel provides an encouraging preview of where those figures are going.

Being fully-vaccinated will soon be the only way to get into Thailand or to extend a visa here. I also expect almost all international airlines to phase out non-vaccinated passengers by end of this year.

 

What a scheme!

The fact is that just around 50% of the US population is fully vaccinated (2 doses) and no country has yet reached the famous 70% threshold, because once over 50% there is much more resistance to vaccination from the remainder of the population.

On top of that, about half of all the countries have yet to start vaccinate their population.

Meanwhile, the infection rates, post vaccination, are not that impressive...the US, for example, is only 20% below Thailand.

The two or three countries that matter the most for Thailand tourism, China, Russia and India, are not in encouraging situations.

China seems to have defeated the virus after injecting its supposedly poorly efficient vaccine in a small part of its population...which is bared to travel abroad.

Russia, with its supposedly very efficient vaccine, is still reporting lots of infections and deaths.

No need to talk about India, we know the situation there.

Vaccinated or not, Israelis and Americans will never make up for the tourism losses from those three countries.

If airlines refuse to transport non vaccinated people, they will all go bankrupt because they won't survive with only half of their potential customers...or they will have to increase their fares by so much that it will kill tourism...

If money was not an issue at all, Thailand wouldn't be my top choice, but all things considered I never regret leaving Western Europe for Thailand more than 20 years ago.

In fact, looking at what is going on in the West, I rather congratulate myself for making this choice.

(I am a bit surprised that there have been only 2 posts in this thread in 16 hours...I know it's Sunday and most members are attending mass, but yet guys...)

I just discovered it while reading an article somewhere else one hour ago.

I'm gonna click on your link...the whole concept sounds interesting...

3 hours ago, cclub75 said:

 

Thailand is not an island.

 

It could be, if only they changed the name by simply adding a letter:

Tha island

Such a small change would do a lot to help keeping the virus at bay...just sayin'

1 hour ago, itay b said:

Yes many of my friend just waiting for this program to be 100% sure and confirmed to Book the flights l.

What are they expecting exactly?

But you can have one yellow book and one blue book, as I do, in two different provinces....

32 minutes ago, Isaan sailor said:

Thailand has a huge oversupply of hotel rooms.  For now, that’s a pretty good deal for us wanderlust expats.

Only when they can operate under normal conditions, which is far from being the case these days...

None of the posts above answer to my question, which is:

Can the PCR test for air travel purpose be done at any hospital in Thailand, or is there a list of approved hospitals?

A friend of mine living in Pattaya tells me that, if you want to leave Thailand by air, the only PCR test accepted is the one done at the Bangkok Pattaya Hospital.

Tests done by other hospitals, such as the Banglamung Public Hospital, are not accepted by airlines.

Is that true?

More generally, are there lists of "approved hospitals" for each province?

Thanks for your input.

9 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

The average 1% CFR has so far translated into  3.4 million known COVID deaths worldwide, actual count is certainly higher 

 

We al have some degree of "COVID fatigue", myself included. But it is not the case that because we have this emotion, the disease is factually unimportant.

 

3.4 million known WITH Covid deaths.

When the Thai Covid deaths numbers were in the single digits, I used to read the history of each deceased patient (it was published), and most of them had comorbidities, often several.

Many had even been bedridden for a long time, but we're nevertheless counted as plain Covid victims.

As for the disease in itself, I can say that I would chose covid over any cancer without any hesitation.

Cancer is still here, killing far more than covid, and while it may not be contagious in the same way than covid (person to person), humans  nevertheless have a lot to do with its spreading...

45 minutes ago, ThailandRyan said:

Primary reason was mask wearing, and hand washing.

Which somehow stopped the flu virus, but not the COVID virus...makes sense...

40 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Is there an update on ICU and serious cases hospitalization?

This is what really matters, not thousands of asymptomatic cases which distort the stats.

1 hour ago, shdmn said:

 

However, Thailand still hasn't made any deals with Pfizer for whatever reason.  It's probably too expensive.  $20 a shot vs $3 a shot for AstraZeneca is a big difference.

The reason is simple: both vaccines offered in Thailand are linked to one Thai company...

In theory, with 4.5 million doses (1.5 + 3), they would be able to vaccinate for 9 days, at a (official) rate of 500,000 per day.

In practice, with only a handful of nurses available to give the shots, they might have enough doses for 90 days...

13 minutes ago, NCC1701A said:

July 1st or August 1st. 

 

then shut down again for Indian variant in October. 

Would that be the American Indian, or the India Indian variant?

52 minutes ago, colinneil said:

Contact N.P.T. they have what you are looking for.

0 six4five488889.

 

Sorry for number like that problem with five and six on my keyboard.

Thanks, I have their number...I already bought their grass cutting machine...

Does anyone know where to buy a rice threshing machine?

Not the industrial type, but more like the family type.

Besides getting the rice, the objective is to preserve as much as possible the grass, that the cows will gladly feed on later on...

Did they at least bring the janitor in for (enhanced) interrogation?