Coronavirus: Thailand may waive quarantine for vaccinated tourists; Duterte won’t ease restrictions
- Foreigners visiting Thailand may be allowed to skip the two-week isolation if they furnish vaccination certificates, Prime Minister Prayuth says
- Duterte also rejected a plan to resume face-to-face school classes in some pilot areas until immunisation campaign kicks off
Foreigners visiting Thailand may be allowed to skip the two-week isolation if they furnish vaccination certificates but authorities will continue to track them, Prayuth said after a cabinet meeting in Bangkok on Tuesday. The government will carefully consider all aspects of such a move before implementing them, the prime minister said.
The Southeast Asian nation has already cleared vaccines made by Sinovac Biotech and AstraZeneca for emergency local use and ordered a total of 63 million doses from the two producers. The country is set to receive the first batch of 2 million doses of Sinovac shot on Wednesday that will allow it start a national inoculation programme as early as next week.
Thailand will eventually allow registration and imports of several brands of Covid-19 vaccines as long as they meet local rules, and private hospitals will be permitted to administer the jabs, Prayuth said. The government will control the distribution of vaccines only in the early stages, he said.
“Many companies have shown interest to register but their documents are not completed yet,” Prayuth said. “It is good that we will have more vaccines than the 65 million doses planned by the government now.”
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Philippine president won’t ease restrictions
Duterte also rejected a plan to resume face-to-face school classes in some pilot areas until vaccinations, which have been set back by delays in the arrival of initial batches of Covid-19 vaccine, have been launched, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said.
The scheduled delivery on Tuesday of 600,000 doses from Sinovac Biotech was postponed anew after the China-based company failed to immediately secure an emergency-use permit from Manila’s Food and Drug Administration. Sinovac got the authorisation on Monday.
Where did the Philippines’ pandemic response go wrong?
Top economic officials have asked Duterte to consider further easing quarantine restrictions in the country starting in March to bolster the economy, which has suffered one of the worst recessions in the region, and stave off hunger. But Duterte rejected the recommendations.
“The chief executive recognises the importance of reopening the economy and its impact on people’s livelihoods,” Roque said but added that the president “gives higher premium to public health and safety”.
The Philippines has reported more than 563,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 infections and more than 12,000 deaths, the second highest in Southeast Asia. The government has faced criticisms for failing to immediately launch a massive vaccine campaign for about 70 million Filipinos.
South Korea en route to approving Pfizer vaccine
The first of three expert panels in South Korea reviewing a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech gave its recommendation on Tuesday for the government to approve the vaccine.
The national pharmaceutical panel is planning to make its recommendation on Friday, the same day that South Korea will begin its immunisation drive. But, the government will wait for a third panel, which has not said when it will reach its conclusion, before deciding whether to grant approval.
High-risk individuals, prioritised at the start of the vaccination campaign, will be inoculated with a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
A day later, however, South Korea will make use of 117,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine that have been supplied through the Covax facility, an international coronavirus vaccine sharing programme, bypassing the need for the government’s final approval.
Around 55,000 health care workers in Covid-19 treatment facilities will receive the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine on Saturday.
The first panel to report on the Pfizer shot advised that it should be administered to people aged 16 and over, taking into account its global trial results and approval in several other countries.
South Korea‘s total number of infections now stands at 87,681, with death toll of 1,573.
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Auckland cluster widens
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lifted a brief Covid-19 lockdown in Auckland last week, saying the measures had helped limit the spread of the infection to a family of three.
However, a student from Papatoetoe High School in Auckland was reported to have tested positive for Covid-19 earlier in the day. Health authorities later said that two siblings of the student were also infected with the virus, and have asked everyone linked to the school to get retested.
Officials have also called on people who had visited specific locations to self-isolate and call local health officials for advice on testing.
Auckland’s nearly 2 million residents were plunged into a snap three-day lockdown earlier this month, after a family of three – two adults and a child – were diagnosed with the more transmissible UK variant of coronavirus.
Australia ramps up immunisation drive
About 166,000 Pfizer vaccine doses arrived late on Monday, authorities said, as the country entered the second day of a nationwide inoculation programme.
Total weekly doses will be raised to 80,000 next week from 60,000 doses this week, with the number expected to reach 1 million a week by the end of March when CSL Ltd begins to locally produce the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Australia on Monday began mass Covid-19 vaccinations for its 25 million people after the arrival last week of a first batch of more than 142,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
“The consistency of supply has been strong and heartening … and that just gives Australians confidence in terms of the effectiveness of the vaccines and confidence in terms of the reliability of supply,” Hunt told reporters in Canberra.
Australia has reported a total of just under 29,000 Covid-19 cases and 909 deaths since the pandemic began. The country’s two most populous states of New South Wales and Victoria reported no new local cases on Tuesday.
Japan eyes emergency end outside Tokyo
The government is considering lifting the emergency in six prefectures including Osaka and Kyoto at the end of the month, according to reports. The decision could come as soon as Friday.
Reporting by Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg
