PHUKET: Expats throughout Phuket will be offered COVID vaccinations under the government’s mass-vaccination rollout now underway in Phuket, a leading Phuket official confirmed today (Mar 31).

Dr Chalermpong, Director of Vachira Phuket Hospital in Phuket Town, delivered the news during a press conference broadcast live online earlier today.

As director of the island’s leading government hospital on the island, Dr Chalermpong is a key member of the Phuket Communicable Disease Committee, which is responsible for drafting and implementing all COVID-19 policies in Phuket.

“In April and May, we will receive Sinovac vaccines while in June, we will receive Astrazeneca, which can be provided to those who are older than 60 years old,” Dr Chalermpong said.

“To be clear, at this stage, all people on the island who are older than 18 years old but younger than 60 years old are eligible to be vaccinated, including people registered as living in Phuket, those who are from other provinces, and foreigners,” he added. 

“The first 100,000 doses of vaccine [to be delivered ‘in April’] will be provided to people registered as living in Phuket and workers in the tourism industry who are from other provinces,” Dr Chalermpong explained.

“Workers in other industries and expats [sic] will be vaccinated in the following lot,” he said.

Of note, the Phuket Provincial Public Health Office (PPHO) today launched a new online form for people to apply to be vaccinated under the government rollout.

In its post announcing the new form, which is still in Thai-language only, the PPHO noted, “For people over 60 years old, register in May”.

People with further queries were asked to call 094-5935342 or 094-5938876.

NO WALK-INS, FOR NOW

During the live broadcast today, Phuket Vice Governor Piyapong Choowong urged people to not approach any hospitals or government offices asking to register in person.

“For those who may not have a smartphone and want to walk-in and register face to face, please calm down and wait first, as at this stage, we are working on online registration only,” he said. 

“From tomorrow on [Apr 1], please keep following up on this. I will find a chance to clarify about this later,” he added.

TOURISM OPERATORS FIRST

Vice Governor Piyapong also called for all tourism business operators to register their staff to be vaccinated so they can get priority in the vaccination rollout.

“All people have to work and cooperate together to accomplish our goal, which is to vaccinate about 70% of our people. For the [next] 50,000 people to be vaccinated, we need cooperation from operators and connections to call their workers to be vaccinated,” he said. 

“We need representatives from businesses to collect their staff names to be vaccinated. We have some operators registered, but the number of workers is still far from the total number of vaccines we will receive,” he said. 

Worrapol Uengsakul, one of the officials tasked with overseeing the online registration, said that the immediate priority were two groups: people working in Phuket’s tourism industry, and people registered as living in Phuket.

“The first group is tourism operators ? hotels, tour operators, activities operators, department stores. They must register under the name of a company registered in Phuket. HR staff [human resources] have to collect their workers’ details and submit the list of names via the site,” he said.

A special form has been made available for business operators to submit their details, he added. (See here.)

“HR staff have to register as a member of the site first, then download an Excel file, add staff information, and submit the list to the site,” Mr Worrapol explained. 

“The second group is those who are registered as living in Phuket. The registration system opened from 10am today,” he said.

Again, a special form just for registered Phuket residents to complete has been made available, he added. (See here.)

“The form for Phuket-registered people is similar to the Google Form that the PPHO used to open for registration earlier. Those who had registered through the previous form do not have to do it again, as we have already collected the names and added them to our site,” Mr Worrapol said. 

“At this stage, about 700 operators have been registered with about 20,000 workers to be vaccinated,” he added. 

“For questions, please add our Line account by searching @155lmkob,” he added.

 

 

The Phuket News