The opposition Pheu Thai Party said it will propose a vaccine-passport programme to help reopen the country to foreign tourism, a lifeline for the economy that has been cut almost entirely by the pandemic restrictions.

“We are going to propose the vaccine passports this Saturday” in a draft scheme to the government, said Paopoom Rojanasakul, Pheu Thai vice secretary-general.

The government has said it prefers to follow the guidance of the World Health Organization (WHO), which has said it is too early for such passports to be a reliable measure against the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Thailand has also yet to roll out its own vaccination of citizens.

Paopoom conceded the WHO warning that vaccines do not provide 100-per-cent protection, “but if we are only sticking with the 100-per-cent number then we will not be able to do anything,” he added.

He said the 80-per-cent protection from inoculation is enough for them to enter Thailand without going through quarantine facilities.

Paopoom said this will help the tourism sector because the number of people who have been vaccinated is only going to increase, especially in developed countries, which provide Thailand with the bulk of its international visitors.

More than 152 million Covid-vaccine doses have been administered across 75 countries as of 11 February, according to Bloomberg.

More than 46 million jabs have been done in the United States, followed by China with 40 million, 18.6 million in the European Union, and 13.6 million in the United Kingdom.

As for doses per 100 population, Israel is leading with 65 people out of 100 already vaccinated followed by the Seychelles on 46, 43 in the United Arab Emirates, 20 in the UK, 14 in Bahrain and 14 in the US.

The Pheu Thai Party’s push for the vaccine passports programme came after the spokeswoman of the Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA), Dr Apisamai Srirangsan, said on Monday that the Thai government will follow the WHO guidelines for vaccine passports or visas.

“We cannot just follow what is being done in other countries, we must thoroughly study everything first and the most important thing is that we must follow the World Health Organization,” she said.

“Many countries, including the UK, the US and Denmark have announced that they are considering on vaccine passports in the coming three to four months but the World Health Organization already said that the current period is still not safe enough,” she added.

Apisamai said the government will study any proposals by the private sector, “but the CCSA have to consider them based on the safety of the Thai people as a whole.”

Paopoom said the government should not doggedly follow the WHO guidelines, which only consider scientific health precautions, but rather consider all aspects of Thailand’s situation.

“Nothing is 100 per cent and we cannot wait until there is zero case around the world because we have to think about our economy as well.”

He acknowledged that some people might carry a vaccine passport and still be infected, but said the government should balance this risk with the impact on the economy of keeping high barriers to entry. Anyone visiting Thailand currently has to undergo two weeks of quarantine in a designated facility.

Thailand went into a recession last year as the number of foreign tourists have dropped from 39 million people in 2019 down to 6-7 million in 2020. The Tourism Authority of Thailand has forecast around 10 million visitors in 2021 but think tanks are expecting around half of that.

The country’s own vaccination strategy relies on sourcing some jabs from China, and a partnership with AstraZeneca that will include some procurement of doses and some transfer of know-how for domestic production.

No vaccinations have yet been administered, and the government has been criticized for turning away options from India and other sources that could have allowed for a more rapid rollout. The authorities have said low rates of infection in the country mean they can proceed with caution, and that rushing a vaccine rollout at this early stage would in effect be experimenting with citizens’ health.

A vaccine passport is a verifiable certification that a person has been vaccinated. Many establishments are looking to make a Covid-vaccine jab mandatory for people entering their planes, ships and concerts, according to Bloomberg.

The World Economic Forum said a vaccine passport could come in a form of a QR code.

Iceland has already begun to provide Covid-vaccination certificates to its citizens. Other European countries that have expressed interest include Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and Estonia.

However, a WHO committee said after its meeting on the issue in January that they are opposing the idea “for the time being”.

“There are still too many fundamental unknowns in terms of the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing transmission and vaccines are still only available in limited quantities,” the committee said in a statement.

 

 

THAI Enquirer