News Forum - New eased rules for travellers entering Thailand enacted

[Tuvoc]

This topic seems to have got, well, a bit off-topic !

So talking about just Bangkok:

 

From 1 October you have the ASQ hotel quarantine that we have all been used to for just 7 days now, and you are confined to the hotel. Correct ?

 

From 1 November - no ASQ quarantine at all, but are you still in a  sandbox where you have to stay in the Bangkok area for 7 days before travelling to other provinces ? Or can you simply leave straight away ?

 

And how much of this has actually been gazetted and is therefore a reality rather than a hope ?

 

[JamesE]

1 hour ago, Tuvoc said:

This topic seems to have got, well, a bit off-topic !

So talking about just Bangkok:

From 1 October you have the ASQ hotel quarantine that we have all been used to for just 7 days now, and you are confined to the hotel. Correct ?

From 1 November - no ASQ quarantine at all, but are you still in a  sandbox where you have to stay in the Bangkok area for 7 days before travelling to other provinces ? Or can you simply leave straight away ?

And how much of this has actually been gazetted and is therefore a reality rather than a hope ?

Yes, 7 days if you're vaccinated, 10 if not, 14 if from a restricted country (which they may have done away with). AQ is now "hotel quarantine" after the first test so you get time in the yard. This is fully approved

1 Nov: Who knows? Hints are that it will be a "sandbox", so 7 days in an approved hotel followed by the ability to travel elsewhere under whatever domestic travel rules are in place at the time. Look for details in about 2 weeks with final approval (based on past actions) during the final days of the month.

[Bob20]

5 hours ago, Tjampman said:

Isn't this 1 infected unvaccinated person vs 1 infected vaccinated person?

Hopefully having the vaccine means the risk of you getting infected is much lower, and even if you get infected might you not fight of the infection faster than a unvaccinated person?

I don't pretend to have any knowledge of this,  but IMHO  unvaccinated people are stil more likely to be infected and therefore spread it.

Unvaccinated people go through this thing without or low symptoms as well in (many) cases

I certainly wouldn't classify vaccinated people in general to be more risky to hang around.

The most recent research (discussed at great lengths on the forum so I won't repeat it again) proves that vaccinated people show a reduction in virus transmission rate, ranging up to 40% (depending on the vaccine used and the research paper).

To add generalised types of behaviour into this just confuses the situation and there may be just as many (like myself) who are still careful in respect to the, as yet, unvaccinated. And to undo an up to 40% advantage there would need to be a particular level of stupidity that we may prevent with the clear advice to "stick to all preventative measures until vaccines have been provided to all who want them".

[Stonker]

5 hours ago, Tjampman said:

don't pretend to have any knowledge of this,  but IMHO  unvaccinated people are stil more likely to be infected and therefore spread it.

Why?

Why more likely to be infected, when the studies show that there's at best not that big a difference?

Above all, why more likely to spread it when the vaccinated are i) far more likely to be asymptomatic so not realise they're infected and act as if they're not and ii) far more likely to take more risks with their behaviour (masks, social distancing, mixing, etc) so present much more of a risk?

I'm not suggesting people shouldn't be vaxxed, anything but as I'm very pro-vax, just suggesting that until you've vaxxed enough people you shouldn't relax any restrictions otherwise you're risking accelerating any spread.

 

[Stonker]

55 minutes ago, Bob20 said:

The most recent research (snip) proves that vaccinated people show a reduction in virus transmission rate, ranging up to 40% (depending on the vaccine used and the research paper).

Agreed 100%, @Bob20, but as you rightly point out this varies depending on the vaccine with Pfizer having the best reduction in transmission rate, AZ considerably less, and the rest (Sinovac, etc) considerably less again.

I don't think there's any need to point out what vaccines have been used here.

55 minutes ago, Bob20 said:

To add generalised types of behaviour into this just confuses the situation and there may be just as many (like myself) who are still careful in respect to the, as yet, unvaccinated.

"Behaviour" doesn't "confuse the issue", it IS the issue!

Of course there are going to be some considerate saints around, like you, but all the available evidence (and I mean ALL), shows and states very clearly that there aren't "just as many (like yourself) who are still careful in respect to the unvaccinated)" but that they generally take far greater risks not only with issues like mask wearing and socialising but with travelling - an issue that up to now you've consistently and in my view correctly said needs to be controlled, for example from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.

But now you're completely reversing your position, suggesting there's no need for any mandatory restrictions on travel from the most infected areas to the least vaccinated areas, and no need for any mandatory restrictions as it can all be achieved by some "clear advice"!!!!!

Either you were wrong with all your posts before about maintaining travel and social restrictions and regulations, or you're wrong now that you've reversed your position.

Either you need the regulations or you don't and it can all be done with "advice" which you've always said before has never been heeded and never worked.

So which is it?

"advice" or regulation?

Or is it just anything that's the opposite of what @BlueSphinx or now I say??? 

[Stonker]

6 hours ago, JamesE said:

Yes, 7 days if you're vaccinated, 10 if not, 14 if from a restricted country (which they may have done away with). AQ is now "hotel quarantine" after the first test so you get time in the yard. This is fully approved

1 Nov: Who knows? Hints are that it will be a "sandbox", so 7 days in an approved hotel followed by the ability to travel elsewhere under whatever domestic travel rules are in place at the time. Look for details in about 2 weeks with final approval (based on past actions) during the final days of the month.

No, that's absolutely NOT what has been approved or planned, and that's massively confusing what's been said.

The sandbox is 100% NOT "seven days in an approved hotel", as in seven days "in" an ASQ hotel in Bangkok, but it's seven days in the sandbox while being booked into and sleeping in the SHA+ hotel at night.

This may sound like semantics and nit-picking, but clarity is what @Tuvoc asked for, not ambiguity.

[MrStretch]

On 10/2/2021 at 2:08 PM, Jason said:

With all the arguement in the comments above, the one thing I see is confusion and contradiction. 

Welcome to the forum.

[Thommo]

21 hours ago, Stonker said:

Agreed - as I said earlier, you get the choice of walking round a hotel room in Bangkok or walking round Phuket, so the idea of quarantine seems to have been binned in order to push everyone to Phuket.

That appears to even include the previous  one or two days waiting for the results of the first PCR test, so those vaccinated but infected can wander around infecting everyone until their test results arrive.

Not so bad now, with arrivals quarantined until their test results come through and arrivals only allowed from / after staying in low risk countries, but still considerably higher than the national level.

...But now they're going to be arriving from anywhere, with India as the main target country where not only is the Covid case level off the charts by Thai standards but entire planeloads have had faked Covid paperwork on arrival in Canada, with over 10% caught with faked Covid paperwork on arrival in the UK just by simple spelling mistakes.

What could possibly go wrong?

You are not correct in your statement in regards to covid numbers in India they are not "off the charts", if compared with India the positive numbers in Thailand would be less then 3000 per day

[Stonker]

34 minutes ago, Thommo said:

You are not correct in your statement in regards to covid numbers in India they are not "off the charts", if compared with India the positive numbers in Thailand would be less then 3000 per day

Sorry, but I'm 100% correct on that as you're ignoring those in India that are, literally, "off the charts".

Talk to those in India and read the Indian language press, or alternatively look at the number hospitalised and / or needing oxygen, literally dying in the streets, or read the government's statements on it, and you get a very different picture to the number of published known cases.

It helps if you can understand and read Hindi, but even if you can't the position is widely reported in the English  language press as well.

While in Thailand the government are at pains to say that the number of known Covid cases is an accurate representation of the 'real' number of cases, the opposite applies in India where the government, the press and the NGOs have all said that the number of known cases is just the tip of the iceberg.

When I said "off the charts", I meant "off the charts".

[Thommo]

1 hour ago, Stonker said:

Sorry, but I'm 100% correct on that as you're ignoring those in India that are, literally, "off the charts".

Talk to those in India and read the Indian language press, or alternatively look at the number hospitalised and / or needing oxygen, literally dying in the streets, or read the government's statements on it, and you get a very different picture to the number of published known cases.

It helps if you can understand and read Hindi, but even if you can't the position is widely reported in the English  language press as well.

While in Thailand the government are at pains to say that the number of known Covid cases is an accurate representation of the 'real' number of cases, the opposite applies in India where the government, the press and the NGOs have all said that the number of known cases is just the tip of the iceberg.

When I said "off the charts", I meant "off the charts".

I speak to my collegues in India often to discuss the situation, if you believe the testing numbers here in Thailand actually reflects the positve cases that are present then maybe you also believe all the BS fromTAT.

I guess 20-30K positive cases a day is off the charts but when daily testing is 1.5 millon plus 

If Thailand was testing at a similar rate to India then there would be at 200000 test done per day, not the 40K.

[Brownie]

2 hours ago, Stonker said:

Talk to those in India and read the Indian language press, or alternatively look at the number hospitalised and / or needing oxygen, literally dying in the streets, or read the government's statements on it, and you get a very different picture to the number of published known cases.

You are talking about what was happening there in April/May

[Stonker]

50 minutes ago, Thommo said:

if you believe the testing numbers here in Thailand actually reflects the positve cases that are present then maybe you also believe all the BS fromTAT.

I've no idea where you've dreamt that up from.  I thought I'd made my view of how accurately the number of reported cases reflects the number of actual / real cases here abundantly clear, as I had here when I wrote: "in Thailand the government are at pains to say that the number of known Covid cases is an accurate representation of the 'real' number of cases".

1 hour ago, Thommo said:

... daily testing is 1.5 millon plus 

If Thailand was testing at a similar rate to India then there would be at 200000 test done per day, not the 40K.

Your maths is flawed, as are your stats.

The population of India is 1.39 billion (1,396,976,005).  The population of Thailand is 70 million (70,018,319).

That means India has a population 19.95 times larger than Thailand. If as you say India is testing 1.5 million plus per day, which it is, then for Thailand to match that they would have to test 75,000 per day, not the 200,000 you say.

As Our World in Data confirms, since the end of June Thailand has been consistently testing between 0.7 and 1.0 in a thousand of the population, while India has been testing between 1.1 and 1.5 in a thousand. Most recently for both (September 18) India tested  1.08 per thousand  and Thailand 0.74  - 31% less.  That's a long, long way off the five times more that you claim India is testing.

[Stonker]

54 minutes ago, Brownie said:

You are talking about what was happening there in April/May

See above.  No, I'm talking about what's still happening in India although fortunately it's a long, long way off what was happening there in April / May.

Covid deaths in India since May have varied between over 7,000 and just under 200 per day, which is almost certainly a continued massive underestimate of the reality.

In April/May, for example, the period you cite, India's Health Management Information System (HMIS)  recorded 827,597 deaths of which only 168,927 were attributed to Covid.  In 2018, 2019 and 2020, total deaths over the same period were 355,905,  391,593 and 350,333.

That very clearly suggests that the death toll from Covid wasn't 168,927 in India in April/May, but was closer to 460,000 - around three times the official figure.

 

 

[Thommo]

Not my claim just data 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-per-day?country=~IND