Pattaya’s mayor reaffirmed the city plans to reopen to fully vaccinated foreign tourists Oct. 1 even though its allotment of Covid-19 vaccines in June has been slashed 82 percent.
Mayor Sonthaya Kunplome said May 25 that the city’s “trial run” of vaccinating the public against Covid-19 May 20-21 was largely successful. There were some problems with registrations and names of eligible people, but the problems were resolved and officials learned how to prevent issues next month, when Pattaya hoped to get 300,000 vaccine doses but now may get as little as 54,000.
If 70 percent of the local population can be vaccinated by Oct. 1, Pattaya will be included in the second phase of the country’s “sandbox” project, which allows fully vaccinated foreign tourists to arrive and stay in Pattaya for a week without having to undergo quarantine.
Phuket’s sandbox is scheduled to open July 1 and the non-tourist provinces in January.
Thailand in June hopes to receive 6.3 million doses of the CoronaShield vaccine from AstraZeneca PLC that is being locally manufactured by Siam Bioscience Co. Of that first batch, Chonburi is expected to receive only 54,000 doses, drastically less than the 300,000 first announced.
By August, Sonthaya said, Chonburi will receive 700,000 doses of 9 million produced. Sonthaya said he wants Pattaya to get 400,000 of those.
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