Foreigners who have been vaccinated still need to quarantine

[SupermarineS6B]

35 minutes ago, KhaoYai said:

Although I'm one of those who can't visit my wife because I can't take enough time off to allow for quarantine and time with her, I'm not sure that's a fair observation.

 

To the best of my knowledge none of the virus manufacturers have shown that having the vaccine stops someone from carrying infection - apparently they are still trying to establish that fact.  Given that, I don't think its surprising that Thai authorities are maintaining their stance that everyone must quarantine.

 

Hopefully the required information will be available soon and even more hopefully, that information will establish that being vaccinated does indeed prevent people from carrying the virus.

 

I do though, understand your sentiment and in all honesty, knowing the way the Thai authorities work, even if it is proven that the vaccine prevents the virus from being carried, I would not expect an immediate relaxation of the current quarantine rules.  I think its more likely that they will reduce quarantine to perhaps seven days for those who've had the vaccine and still require a negative test before being allowed out of quarantine or something along those lines.

The authorities will do as they've always done, they'll move the goal posts to suit them and their pockets because as you might of forgotten, they don't give a fig about foreigners....... only their money......  

[mlkik]

1 hour ago, ThailandGuy said:

I understand the why but I will NOT visit Thailand under these conditions. It is as simple as that ! The economic crisis in Thailand will continue if people won't come. Who has 14 extra days to spend?

Then maybe you should change your name to NotAnymoreAThailandGuy 555

[TSF]

8 minutes ago, SupermarineS6B said:

The authorities will do as they've always done, they'll move the goal posts to suit them and their pockets because as you might of forgotten, they don't give a fig about foreigners....... only their money......  

"The Public Health Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday saying all arrivals to Thailand will have to undergo the mandatory 14-day quarantine even if they have been vaccinated."

 

All you guys getting your nickers in a knot over this statement from the Public Health, just bear in mind it will change in a couple of weeks, and change again a week or so after that, and change again not long after that. By mid 2021, after the results from the mass vaccinations are kicking in they're be relaxing things. 

[djayz]

5 hours ago, Seeall said:

you made my day, my month farangstan ha ha love it so much , you my friend are my main comedian,, ha ha.. it tickles me.. cant get it out of my head...

I'll take that as a compliment. ????

[KhaoYai]

17 minutes ago, SupermarineS6B said:

The authorities will do as they've always done, they'll move the goal posts to suit them and their pockets because as you might of forgotten, they don't give a fig about foreigners....... only their money......  

No, I haven't forgotten that and I know that they don't give a damn about foreigners wanting to visit their wives and/or families. However, I do know its vital for the Thai economy that the tourist industry gets back on its feet as soon as possible so I'd like to think that quarantine will either be reduced or ended alltogether if its shown that a vaccine prevents infection.

[Jurg]

2 hours ago, Bkktodd said:

At least if im vaccinated in the Usa with Moderna @96 % effectiveness i wont get infected by some thai on the airplane or in “so so covid free LOS”

Apparently the vaccine does not protect you from being infected, but it will be able to have your own immune system working/fesoonding in a manner that you will not get sick, or even die from the virus infection. 

[KhaoYai]

33 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

Lots of people have 14 extra days to spend. Thus, the  ASQ hotels are mostly full.

I doubt that the majority of those are tourists - I think most are either returning after being stuck abroad or visiting their wives and families. Note that Thai's also use ASQ's - back in July a Thai guy who lives in the US said that when he arrived at his ASQ hotel in Bangkok the split there was 70% Thai/30% foreign.

 

I haven't checked if the ASQ hotels are full or not - I don't know of any way of doing that other than phoning them all.  However, a sure sign that a hotel isn't doing too well is when they start offering promotions etc. I note that several ASQ's have been offering price reductions recently, some through adverts on this site.

Edited December 30, 2020 by KhaoYai

[KhaoYai]

10 minutes ago, Jurg said:

Apparently the vaccine does not protect you from being infected, but it will be able to have your own immune system working/fesoonding in a manner that you will not get sick, or even die from the virus infection. 

Do you have some recent information on that?  As far as I know, none of the manufacturers have said that it does or does not protect from infection but all of them have said they are carrying out tests to establish that.

[metisdead]

Some scaremongering posts and replies have been removed. 

 

Troll posts and the replies have been removed. 

[NeoDinosaw]

21 hours ago, rak sa_ngop said:

So where have you read that vaccinations are 100 % effective?

 

Enlighten us please.

Nothing on God' Earth is 100%     - it's all a question of propability  (the odds).

You have to take a risk - however small    (e.g. trillion to one)

[puipuitom]

I partially can understand the Thai argumentation, as too little knowledge about how immune a vaccinated person / a person who had the disease, are immune now.

Think it over towards yourself: you give a 100% trust to somebody who had a vaccination / had the disease, even trust your child to such a person, or ... let's be a little precarious still...

see also the WHO: https://www.businessinsider.com/vaccine-experts-pitch-asymptomatic-covid-19-vaccine-trials-2020-11?international=true&r=US&IR=T 

Edited December 30, 2020 by puipuitom

[Joinaman]

21 hours ago, ourmanflint said:

This is really not true, there are a handful of cases where people supposedly got ill twice, it probably meant they did not have enough of an immune response from 1st round, but as I said, exceedingly rare

but how many infected people would it take to re start a pandemic ? 1, 5, 50, ?

how will they know what the life of the vaccinations is, unless they either get sick, or they keep testing every person ?\

And how long to vaccinate a population of over 66 million, not once, but twice ?, but then possibly withing the year, to do so again ?

[Blumpie]

Nobody is going to want to come to Thailand anyways until a large portion of the population has it under control.  If the health care system collapses (i.e. pandemic gets out of control) vaccinated or not it won't make a bit of difference on people's minds.  

We are so far from tourism returning to normal it's not even funny.  

[sezze]

7 hours ago, starky said:

What I'm saying is lockdowns don't appear to be working and how long would you like humanity to stay locked down? We've done 1 year whats enough for you 2, 3 5?

   Problem with the world is we are too precious its about survival of the species not the individual.  That's where you got me wrong mate if I have to be one of the ones that go or my family so be it. As for the rest of your ridiculous broken leg rant what has treating the ill got anyrhing to do with lockdowns?

  1 person in Australia under the age of 40 has died. Babies aren't dying neither are children. 40 000 a month die in the US from obesity alone thats more than covid. Wake up mate. Close all hospitals?  What a pillock.

They are working , curves climbing and with measures taken , the curves go down . We done 9 months now , it won't take 2,3 5 y more . 1 person under 40 has died in Australia but Australia barely had cases at all , due to their large distance/strict travel regulations . You might come over to the rest of the world ( esp Europe ) to see a tiny bit more cases . In Australia you do have sports games this year with 1000's of people can come watch the game , all nicely close together . Bars and restaurants are open in big parts of the country and besides a few areas who did have minor things , you had practically 0 going on . What are you complaining about ? Thailand and Australia , are very similar for that matter , near 0 lockdown , near 0 cases  , no full hospitals , very few fatalities .

We in Europe got night curfews , bars/restaurants over here have been closed for over 6 months this year ( depending on country ) , Dancing and nightbars haven't opened in 9 months .Sports can only watch on TV for biggest part of the y  . Even hairdressers in my country have now been closed for 2 months , and had been closed 2 months during 1st wave .

If everybody stays home and does not see other people , the virus can't spread and we would have been out of this mess in 3 weeks .

We are busy with survival of the individual , the species will survive no problem . Mortality rate is low , but like i always said mortality doesn't mean anything ( in this case , for Ebola would be a different thing ) . For Covid it is about the many who do need medical help , but surely can be treated and will survive . When the medical help can follow the amount of people who do get sick , then it would be similar like your "flu" . This isn't the case , many areas got full hospitals , unnecessary treatments aren't done ( bad knee , sorry have to wait for operation ) , hospital staff fall sick themselves , from covid /burnout/psychologic .

[Janner1]

23 hours ago, Natai Beach said:

and have a new mutant highly infectious strain that is now making itself around the world because of people traveling. 

Where is your evidence for that statement? Most of the new variant infections have been proven to have NO travel history the latest being a 41 year old American who has never travelled outside his home area.

On top of that the new variant was first DISCOVERED in the U.K. there is NO proof that it first mutated in the U.K. 

The mutation was discovered in two South African who came to the U.K. and became sick testing positive, and our professionals discovered it because we are right on top of testing and WE shared the info with the rest of the world.

Some of you will now say this is a contradiction given my opening statement but if you read it properly you will see that I said MOST and that is the truth in so far as the hourly updates and daily government ministers and scientific assessments and reporting we get here in the U.K tell us

The evidence is that all of the new variant testing shows the variant to be very slightly different in every country pointing to the COVID virus mutating in different ways around the world, however this has yet to be fully proven.

The new variants are much more contagious BUT appears to be LESS powerful as the daily death rate up to now is lower in the U.K. but only time will tell on this matter, but it could be as a result of herd immunity.

Immunisation is definitely the way to go and the new Oxford - Astra Zeneca  vaccine COULD mean that we will be free of Covid by late Spring IF we all take it.

The O-AZ vaccine immunisation starts here on January 4 and 50,000,000 people are expected to receive it as quickly as possible, and it is now up to the rest of the world including Thailand to pull it’s finger out and get it done

[Jurg]

1 hour ago, KhaoYai said:

Do you have some recent information on that?  As far as I know, none of the manufacturers have said that it does or does not protect from infection but all of them have said they are carrying out tests to establish that.

That information I got ca 1week ago by listening to the information on Radio in Europe, given by Epidemiologists from Switzerland and Germany. 

However, in IMHO, my understanding is any vaccine only can come into activation once you bring the virus into your body, I would have thought ????.

And if your vaccine is per example rated as 75% efficacy you would still have 25% possible effect in getting sick from the virus. If it would give you a milder effect of the infection, I do not know. 

[KhaoYai]

8 hours ago, starky said:

What I'm saying is lockdowns don't appear to be working and how long would you like humanity to stay locked down? We've done 1 year whats enough for you 2, 3 5?

That depends on what you expect from a lockdown.  Some people seem to think that a lockdown will end Covid - it won't and certainly in my home country, that was never the expectation.

 

What the UK government is seeking from a lockdown is to keep the virus at level that our hospitals can cope with until a cure, vaccine or effective treatment is found and I doubt that other countries have any different expectations.

 

The problem that any government faces is that as long as people are mobile, the virus is mobile. The situation changes from day to day,  Governments are 'damned if they do and damned if they don't' - I wouldn't want to be in their place.

 

The one thing that I would say is that many governments, including the UK, seem to be behind the curve.  I would encourage being pro-active rather than re-active if I had anything to do with it.  In that respect, from being well 'behind the curve' early on, by not relaxing the quarantine regulations for those vaccinated yet, I think the Thai authorities are being pro-active.

[KhaoYai]

4 minutes ago, Jurg said:

That information I got ca 1week ago by listening to the information on Radio in Europe, given by Epidemiologists from Switzerland and Germany. 

You will hear different stories all the time - there is no total consensus by the experts on any aspect of this virus. I would wait until the results of the manufacturers investigations have been considered by a country's regulatory authority.

[KhaoYai]

7 minutes ago, Jurg said:

And if your vaccine is per example rated as 75% efficacy you would still have 25% possible effect in getting sick from the virus.

Yes, granted but at some point, every country has to decide what is acceptable and what is not to enable life to get back to normal.  Any country that wants 100% protection may be waiting a long time - possibly forever.

[Jeffr2]

2 hours ago, KhaoYai said:

I doubt that the majority of those are tourists - I think most are either returning after being stuck abroad or visiting their wives and families. Note that Thai's also use ASQ's - back in July a Thai guy who lives in the US said that when he arrived at his ASQ hotel in Bangkok the split there was 70% Thai/30% foreign.

 

I haven't checked if the ASQ hotels are full or not - I don't know of any way of doing that other than phoning them all.  However, a sure sign that a hotel isn't doing too well is when they start offering promotions etc. I note that several ASQ's have been offering price reductions recently, some through adverts on this site.

Agreed! Most are returning expats. Whom have told me that they had a hard time getting ASQ rooms.

[Clarkey611]

It is not 14 days quarantine. It is 16 days and 15 nights. Nice photoshop picture in the article and good to see such skin fitting Nitrile rubber gloves.

[jerolamo]

this kind of decision out off any logic seems to be very suspect. Why do they choose to still lock themself out of the world and impact their own population from tourism industry work and much more economic area of concern by this kind of decision ?

What we can be able to understand and thinking ? I mean, everybody has or not an idea (who is different from other, pro or anti or more measured), but which is the list content describing these probably ideas to react in front of this so dramatic decision ?

They impact economy, families, poor people (so the wide majority in Thailand) to protect who, what (COVID kill at most, 0.5% of the seek people, if we count the positive PCR tested, it is far less, because you can have a little bit of sar-cov-2 and not be seek or contaminated) ?

I can not trust they are so in panic mode or dumb, it can not be possible, what's happening then ?

It is so long for... a virus who doesn't kill much.

And now, vaccine or not, immunate or not, contaminated or not, the same locked and expensive story rule again ? wow... what does it mean ? what are they searching for ?

[jerolamo]

It can not be representative, they don't have so big noise.

But yes, i get the idea, they are thinking the virus is only from foreigners... "dirty fareng"...

so sad to fall so dramatically down the floor by thinking that so dark xenophobic idea and condemn own citizen to be more and more isolate from the world and the economy, to ignore families and to be so afraid in front of the flue.

This story time will stay in the history much longer then the COVID will exist. It is when there is some problems than we can see who is who.

[RobU]

20 hours ago, UKresonant said:

 

Your first sentence notes a very sensible condition to be in, for any tourist considering going there ????, (as well as for the tourist of course). This thing will keep perpetuating until a matched half of the people in any proximity, have had the shots.

 

They better get a shift on and do it before 2022,  Once the Oxford not for profit vaccine is approved surely they have the expertise in Thailand to allow manufacture and administer the vaccine on a not for profit basis?

Not a good situation if they cannot focus ????.  Once other countries get well down the road with the vaccine, what shall happen to the tourist industry, if at xmas 2021 it is in the news as SARS-cov2  exporter, destination?

I understand that the Oxford Vaccine is actually produced in Thailand

[NorthernRyland]

23 hours ago, RR2020 said:

In the whole of 2020 only 377 people under 60 years old  have died in England from Covid who had no "known" underlying disease.  This is from NHS statistics openly available.

 

Once you have vaccinated all people over 65............thats the end of the pandemic.

 

The UK and Israel will be the first countries in the world to achieve this.

 

In the US it's ~55k under 65. That's out of 330 million or 0.00016% of the population. For perspective about 60k people die of the flu every year in the US.

 

Sensible solution is to vaccine over 65s and let everyone else fend for themselves. It's not the plague people.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex

[RobU]

32 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

 

In the US it's ~55k under 65. That's out of 330 million or 0.00016% of the population. For perspective about 60k people die of the flu every year in the US.

 

Sensible solution is to vaccine over 65s and let everyone else fend for themselves. It's not the plague people.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex

Valid point but after all the hype and scaremongering I doubt those under 50 would accept such a solution. Governments (especially the UK) hoist by their own petard

[Nout]

On 12/29/2020 at 8:24 PM, ukrules said:

They're idiots, vaccination is the only way out of this mess and as such it's their ultimate goal yet it's obviously not good enough for them.

 

I suspect they will also be quarantining recovered patients as well, those who are immune to it?

No they are not idiots. A vaccinated person  might have protection for themselves but may still be able to carry and communicate the infection to other people thus the need for quarantine. To use the term idiot about caring and intelligent medical experts is deeply offensive.

[Nout]

The headline is couched in divisive racist terms by use of the word foreigners. Anybody, Thai or foreign returning here has to do quarantine even if they have been vaccinated.

[geisha]

On 12/29/2020 at 3:50 PM, rak sa_ngop said:

So where have you read that vaccinations are 100 % effective?

 

Enlighten us please.

ukrules did not say the vaccin was 100% effective. Read again. The vaccin is 95% effective , and if you have any better ideas than the vaccin you better let the world know. 

[Janner1]

These are the stats as we know them plus one as yet to be confirmed as something other than internet info and left entirely up to the reader to decide what he/she wishes to believe.
Pfizer-BioNteck vaccine made in and shipped from Belgium and India 95% effective but has to be kept at  -70C

 

Oxford Astra - Zeneca vaccine made in and shipped from England 96% effective and can be kept at normal fridge temperature.

 

Russian “ Sputnik vaccine ( surprised they did’nt call it Putin ) made in and shipped from Russia 75% effective, best kept in Russia as little or no testing

 

Chinese Sinovac coronavac vaccine made in China ( just like all the other cheap low quality Chinese products ) 79% effective best kept anywhere as long as it’s not in your arm, rumoured to cause a two headed side effect.

 

As far as the U.K. is concerned the OA-Z vaccine will be rolled out on January 4 with up to 50,000,000 innoculations completed by April 2021 ‘ hopefully’