The decision is a blow to efforts to revive
Thailand’s battered tourism sector ahead of the peak holiday season.
Government spokesman Thanakorn
Wangboonkongchana also announced the suspension of “sandbox” programs that
allow visitors to remain and move around specific locations, except for the
resort island of Phuket, where he said it will stay in effect.
“This is not to shut off tourists but to
temporarily suspend arrivals,” he said. He added that the decision would be
reviewed on Jan. 4.
He said about 200,000 people who have
registered for the “test-and-go” scheme, known as Thailand Pass, but have not
yet entered Thailand will be allowed to come. They will be subject to a
coronavirus test on arrival and a second test seven days later at the expense
of the government. He did not provide further details.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said
Thailand will not accept any new applications for the “test-and-go” program.
“Today we no longer accept more
applications for travelers. No new applications,” he told reporters. “We have
about 200,000 travelers who already registered. No other restrictions apply for
these people, but we will have to track them.”
He added that “from now, we are back to the
old system of quarantine when entering.”
The decision came after Thailand recorded
its first case of domestic transmission of the omicron variant last week, when
a returning resident tested negative on arrival but later tested positive and
infected members of his family. The few other positive cases were all caught
after testing on arrival and quarantined.
Thailand and other countries in Southeast
Asia eased entry restrictions for fully vaccinated travelers in November in an
effort to kickstart tourism, a major revenue earner that collapsed with the
start of the pandemic. But with the exception of Thailand, few have attracted
the return of many foreign visitors due to complex entry requirements.
Bali, a prime tourism destination, has had
only a few dozen foreign tourists since it reopened, and Cambodia and Vietnam
have also struggled.
Starting in November, Thailand began
reopening to fully vaccinated visitors without quarantine, easing a lockdown
that caused massive job losses and hardship. Tourism accounted for some 20% of
the economy before the pandemic.
With the onset of omicron, Thailand and
other countries in Asia moved swiftly to block entry from an initial group of
African nations. But Thailand kept its “test-and-go” program active for fully
vaccinated travelers from more than 60 countries.
Under the scheme, fully vaccinated visitors
had to show negative results from RT-PCR tests before flying and upon their
arrival had a second PCR test. They had to spend their first night in a
government-approved hotel awaiting their test results. If the results were
negative, they could travel anywhere in Thailand.
Thailand had by far the most ambitious
program in the region to allow travelers to enter and move around the country.
It eased restrictions after a successful vaccination program that has seen 100
million doses administered to its population of about 60 million people.
Booster programs are already underway around the country.
COVID-19 cases have steadily been dropping,
with 2,476 new cases and 32 deaths reported Tuesday. Thailand has recorded
2,196,529 cases and 21,346 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Thailand tested the waters with a “sandbox”
program under which it reopened Phuket in July to fully vaccinated visitors
without quarantine, allowing them free movement on the island for 14 days and
then onward travel throughout the country. It then cut the requirement to seven
days, but actively tracked visitors and required them to undergo RT-PCR tests
on day one and seven.
Since Thailand reopened to tourists on Nov.
1 with “test-and-go,” it has received 290,000 visitors, 130,000 of them in
November. Last week, Phuket even had fully booked resorts.
Thailand shut its borders to most foreign
visitors in April last year after local transmission of the coronavirus started
to climb. Foreign tourist arrivals in 2019 were almost 40 million but plunged
to 6.7 million in 2020, with most of those visitors coming in the first quarter.
The government had targeted 1.5 trillion
baht ($44.6 billion) in revenue from tourism in 2021. Thailand recorded 3.4
trillion baht ($101 billion) in income from the tourism sector in 2019.
Most countries in Asia have reported only a
handful of omicron cases so far, or in the case of India, about 200.
India, which also opened to vaccinated
tourists in November, has since suspended commercial international flights
until Jan. 31 as global alarm over the variant grows. Still, international
travel has continued via a number of flights from countries that India had
agreements with.
Japan, where the vast majority of the
population is vaccinated, now bans entry to most foreign nationals.
Mainland China and Hong Kong have continued
to ban tourists from entry. Visitors face tight entry restrictions and
mandatory 14- to 21-day quarantines depending on which part of the country they
arrive in. -AP
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