Pattaya officials are scrambling to count the area’s tourism workers before the deadline to request enough coronavirus vaccines to inoculate the city’s entire sector.
Chonburi Deputy Gov. Naris Niramaiwong met March 24 with Pattaya tourism association members, public health workers and government administrators in Banglamung and Sattahip districts.
Naris said a key to reopening Thailand to foreign tourists is to vaccinate at least 60 percent of the population so that overseas visitors will have confidence that Thailand is safe to visit.
He urged associations, employers and the Social Security Office to survey the population to determine not only how many people were working in the tourism industry, but how many were registered to live in Banglamung and Sattahip, how many had homes registered elsewhere but work around Pattaya, and how many are migrant workers from neighboring countries.
The government earlier estimated it would need almost a million doses of the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine to inoculate enough tourism workers nationwide.
The industry is worried that Thailand’s slow-starting vaccination program won’t be finished by October, the soft deadline the government set for reopening. So Naris urged meeting attendees to move quickly.
