Thailand has pushed back plans to reopen Bangkok and some other major cities to foreign arrivals until November, due to COVID-19 vaccination rates falling short of targets.
Earlier this month, officials said that they planned to welcome vaccinated tourists without quarantine to major cities like Bangkok, Hua Hin, Pattaya and Chiang Mai in October to revive the country’s crucial tourism sector.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand has said, “Cities we’ve targeted have not reached 70 per cent vaccination rates and so we have to push out the date to November.”
Despite being a production hub for the AstraZeneca vaccine, Thailand’s vaccine roll-out has struggled to keep pace. So far, 44 per cent of residents in Bangkok have received two doses.
Overall, Thailand has vaccinated 22 per cent of the estimated 72 million people living in the country.
Up to now, the tourism scheme has only been launched on the islands of Koh Samui and Phuket.
