Phuket marks first Sandbox tourist infected with COVID-19

[Espanol]

1 hour ago, impulse said:

That's a good source and thanks for that.  Let's run with that data.  They tested about 1% of Phuket's 80,000 people and found 4 positives out of 759.  Meaning about 0.5% of Phuket, or 400 people are positive.  (Assuming no selection bias and that people with the sniffles didn't run away and hide to prevent being tossed into quarantine)  If one infected Sandbox tourist escapes into Phuket, that bring it up from 400 to 401 Covid positives on the island.  Not great, but certainly not catastrophic.

 

And with a 0.5% positive rate and some tourists with $$$, I'd expect a tidal wave of Thai people to be swarming to the island to escape the 20% positive crowds with no tourist jobs.  That's what's going to kill the Sandbox.  Not the 1/2000 tourists that test positive.

And experts agree with your figures:

 

"Phuket Provincial Public Health Office (PPHO) Chief Dr Kusak Kukiattikoon urged the public not to panic over international arrivals bringing the virus to Phuket.

“Worry more about domestic arrivals,” he said."

 

https://www.thephuketnews.com/infected-sandbox-tourist-vaccinated-with-sinopharm-80606.php

Edited July 8, 2021 by Espanol

[impulse]

20 minutes ago, Espanol said:

And experts agree with your figures:

 

"Phuket Provincial Public Health Office (PPHO) Chief Dr Kusak Kukiattikoon urged the public not to panic over international arrivals bringing the virus to Phuket."

 

https://www.thephuketnews.com/infected-sandbox-tourist-vaccinated-with-sinopharm-80606.php

A year ago, Thailand had virtually no Covid.  Yet, Covid was running rampant in much of the rest of the world.  Nobody was vaccinated anywhere, and Covid test results could take days- even weeks to get results.  Back then, it made sense to keep foreign tourists out, even at the cost of millions of temporarily unemployed tourism workers.   Even a Sandbox concept was dodgy.

Those conditions have changed about 180 degrees, and yet a lot of people are still stuck in the mindset that tourists and tourism are a bio-hazard.  Today, vaccinated, tested tourists are the safest people in all of Thailand.  And they come with much needed tourist cash...  Not 100% safe, but nobody is, or will ever be.  The sooner they can jump start tourism (safely), the sooner they can end the economic hardships of millions of Thai people.

 

 

Edited July 8, 2021 by impulse

[JeffersLos]

On 7/7/2021 at 12:23 PM, webfact said:

Phuket Sandbox

Too long.

 

They should contract it to 'Phuk-Box'. 

[oldcpu]

2 hours ago, impulse said:

That's a good source and thanks for that.  Let's run with that data.  They tested about 1% of Phuket's 80,000 people and found 4 positives out of 759.  Meaning about 0.5% of Phuket, or 400 people are positive.

Not sure if you typed that the way you intended. 

 

While the # of people in Phuket at present is anyone's conjecture (due to the mass exodus in June-2020) it is surely more than 80,000 people in Phuket.  I think current estimates are around 465,000 or so,  with wild variance around that - but not enough to lower it to 80,000 people.  I recommend going with 465,000 for calculations with an understanding the number is far from exact.

 

Also, the Phuket testing is 'targeted test' ... ie its not random testing, where if it was random (but representative) testing, then globally apply some % to the entire population might make sense.  It doesn't make sense here.  

 

In the case of targeted testing, one has cause for a suspicion that the persons being tested could have COVID, or they have just arrived/entered Phuket and are being tested to confirm safe to enter Phuket.  Ergo in general, one would expect a higher % of POSITIVE COVID cases with targeted testing.

 

I think to take some # (such as 0.5%) and apply that to the entire population, one would need to test a more representative sample across all of Phuket, and not go with the targeted tests (where for targeted tests, where there is more cause to test (such as people having symptoms, or people in contact with someone who has had COVID - where people are worried enough to go get tested) there would presumably be a higher % infected.

 

Further, also worth considering is this web site: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

where if one selects Thailand and the 'metric' tests one can find the # of tests in Thailand.  If one looks at that, and compares the # of tests in Thailand from 1-April to present time, and then looks at the Phuket police site I provided, and compares the # of tests in Phuket over the same timeframe, and then does a calculation of the per-capita tests in all Thailand, vs the per capita tests in all Phuket, it will indicate if Phuket has conducted more tests per capita than the Thailand average # of tests conducted per capita. 

 

Having more tests done suggests figures are more accurate.

 

My calculation indicates Phuket has had 3x the number of tests per capita compared to the rest of Thailand. Couple that with the fact Phuket hospitals are not crowded with COVID cases (unlike areas such as Bangkok and provinces around Bangkok whose hospitals are over flowing) ... then it gives credence to the Phuket # of new cases per day, relative to the # of new cases per day reported elsewhere in Thailand.

 

That is not so say the Phuket new cases per day is the actual number of new cases in Phuket, but it does suggest Phuket numbers are far more accurate than the numbers in average in Thailand - with relatively few new cases per day in Phuket (I think yesterday was 4 and today was 7 new cases in Phuket).

 

Not great, but I think its a more accurate way to assess this.

 

Edited July 8, 2021 by oldcpu

[gk10012001]

So what if the tourist was infected.  He was vaccinated right?  It is known that vaccinated people can still get the virus and can still transmit it.  There is nothing new about that.  The vaccines are in general designed to limit the severity of the symptoms.  You can not and should not expect a vaccinated person to be treated like a leper, dragged off to isolation, forced to pay for quarantine, etc.  It is bad enough they have to pay for the 4 tests while in the sandbox scheme.  Would you actually trust the Thai medical testing places or procedures?  You know if there is a chance to make some money, corrupt things can happen.  Or accidents and false positives do happen. 

[impulse]

24 minutes ago, oldcpu said:

Not sure if you typed that the way you intended. 

 

While the # of people in Phuket at present is anyone's conjecture (due to the mass exodus in June-2020) it is surely more than 80,000 people in Phuket. 

You're right.   I Googled "Phuket population" and it came up with 79,308 in Phuket city.  The whole island has a lot more.  My bad.

 

Whether the tests positives are 0.5% for Phuket, or 20% for the rest of Thailand, they've had 1 Sandbox tourist out of 2000 who tested positive on arrival.  That's 0.05%, making the Sandbox tourists the safest people to be around in all of Thailand.  Even if one of them slipped through by mistake or a cunning escape, adding one more case to the thousands already in Thailand would hardly be catastrophic.  Especially if he slipped through with a bunch of sweaty tourist money.

 

And I'm not sure I believe that Phuket testing is any more accurate than the rest of Thailand, given that anyone who tests positive is sentenced to 2 weeks of quarantine.  That's quite a dis-incentive to get tested right before the tourist money finally shows up.  Not to mention the negative incentive for Phuket to report more than 90(?) cases a day, which could trigger a shutdown of the Sandbox.  If they're testing fewer than 800 people a day in a population of 80,000 (much less 500,000), they're really not going to get adequate data.  And they're certainly not going to find 90 positives on 800 tests a day.  Hmmmmm.

 

[impulse]

12 minutes ago, gk10012001 said:

So what if the tourist was infected.  He was vaccinated right?  It is known that vaccinated people can still get the virus and can still transmit it.  There is nothing new about that.  The vaccines are in general designed to limit the severity of the symptoms.  You can not and should not expect a vaccinated person to be treated like a leper, dragged off to isolation, forced to pay for quarantine, etc.  It is bad enough they have to pay for the 4 tests while in the sandbox scheme.  Would you actually trust the Thai medical testing places or procedures?  You know if there is a chance to make some money, corrupt things can happen.  Or accidents and false positives do happen. 

While I agree that it stinks, has anyone figured out whether his mandatory Covid insurance is funding his quarantine?  I did see that the SHA+ hotel is required to refund his pre-payment...  If his Covid insurance covers the quarantine, and he gets his hotel money back, he's only out time, mental anguish, and an airplane ticket.  Even then, it seems like travel insurance may cover trip interruption and refund his airline ticket?  I'm not claiming to know.  Just spitballing.

 

And it will be interesting to see if he gets retested and perhaps released if they figure out it was a false positive.  Still too early to know just how bad his situation is...  

 

As far as deliberately hosing a guy to make some money, I seriously doubt they'd risk the bad publicity for a few $$$.  Too many eyes on the Sandbox.

 

[JCP108]

1 hour ago, impulse said:

 

 

And it will be interesting to see if he gets retested and perhaps released if they figure out it was a false positive.  Still too early to know just how bad his situation is...  

 

 

This is a very good point. As someone who very much doesn't want to travel there and get caught up in an undesired 14-day hospitalization or quarantine, I want to know that they do a follow up test to confirm the first one and, if the second one is negative, they reverse the mandatory measures and allow the traveler to resume the sandboxing. However, the past behaviors of the Thai officials have not seemed to be so smart. If they did the smart thing, they would reduce the reluctance of people like me to travel to Thailand where we would spend a bunch of money.

Edited July 8, 2021 by JCP108

[Letseng]

20 hours ago, smedly said:

most of the focus is on those few coming to Phuket

 

would be intersting to know how many have left Thailand over the last few months, I personally know of at least 10 people who have left or have flights booked to leave, there were a lot of people who were granted free extensions for months to stay here who would have left a long time ago, now that home countries like the UK are getting back to normal I would imagine most of those will be on their way back  

UK getting back to normal with 30.000+ new Covid cases. Hospitals once again filling up, operations and other treatment put on hold.

 

[smedly]

2 hours ago, Letseng said:

UK getting back to normal with 30.000+ new Covid cases. Hospitals once again filling up, operations and other treatment put on hold.

 

yes detected cases are rising because the UK does mass testing but hospitals certainly are not filling up, because of mass vaccination the whole profile of the disease has changed 

 

There are some in the UK who refuse to take the vaccine - that is on them 

 

 

[Espanol]

5 hours ago, impulse said:

If his Covid insurance covers the quarantine, and he gets his hotel money back, he's only out time, mental anguish, and an airplane ticket.  Even then, it seems like travel insurance may cover trip interruption and refund his airline ticket

But most important: he will spend in quarantine his 2 weeks of holidays per year.

 

It's not only a matter of money. 

[impulse]

58 minutes ago, Espanol said:

But most important: he will spend in quarantine his 2 weeks of holidays per year.

 

It's not only a matter of money. 

That's true, but those odds are about 1 in 140 arrivals.  (15 quarantines in +/-2100 arrivals, assuming his entourage is also in ALQ)  Compare that to ASQ in BKK, where there's a 100% chance of losing 2 weeks AND paying for that privilege.

 

And in either case, the yes/no decision is left to the individual traveler, who may have a reason to put up with the inconvenience and risk.  It's not dictated by the gub'ment.

 

Still, I hope they handle it well and he and his flight companions are released if they test negative.

Edited July 8, 2021 by impulse