Here's today's article from the BKK Post:
PM mulls quarantine 'bypass'
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thai ... s-quarantine-bypass
EXCERPTS:
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has agreed to consider a proposal by the Phuket business community to allow foreign visitors to the island province who have already been vaccinated against Covid-19 bypass regular quarantine.
"Phuket, for instance, has proposed that vaccinated tourists should be exempted from the mandatory quarantine. Well, if possible I'm ready to take care of that," he said.
Gen Prayut said a digital platform needs to be created to register the tourists.
So: the PM who's also a military general wants a digital platform...the Thai gov has a track record in this department. This is a gov't that publishes official notices on Facebook, FFS. If past performance is anything to go by, whatever they devise is not going to function properly.
Case-in-point: when COVID measures were first introduced about a year ago, a contact-tracing method called ThaiChana was introduced. At first it was a website, meaning the person's smartphone had to connect to a website...whcih of course crashed on the regular. To combat this, a separate platform called MorChana was created. Then ThaiChana released an app, which started working well after a few weeks/months, I can't recall. But the MorChana QR code is still posted at the entrance to at least one shopping mall that I know of.
ThaiGov developers may still be using Windows XP and Internet Explorer for all I know. This bureaucracy is entrenched. They already have some sort of digital platform called "Thailand Plus" which is supposed to handle the task of tracking visitors and it gets mentioned now and again.
As ever, we'll see how this plays out when people start arriving at Immigration with proof of vaccination. Expect some...confusion.
JtB | |
