#Thai Health Department Wants Tracking for Beaches and Tourist Spots

Dr. Panpimol Wipulakorn head of Thailand’s health department has said that even though some restrictions on domestic travel have been relaxed, travelers should adopt “new normal”.

This week popular beaches opened across Thailand with great fanfare by beach goers especially at Bang Saen beach in Chonburi province. Bang Saen beach in Chon Buri was almost bursting at the seams with beach goers. Traffic on the beachfront road in Bang Saen ground to a halt prompting authorities to order its temporary closure.

Now Thailand’s health department has made calls for limiting the number of visitors to tourist spots to prevent a possible surge in Covid-19. The concerns also come as Thailand’s government prepares to allow more businesses and activities to reopen ahead of schedule.

Dr. Panpimol Wipulakorn head of Thailand’s health department has said that even though some restrictions on domestic travel have been relaxed, travellers should adopt “new normal”.

People need to continue to practices and maintain social distancing and safety precautions. And above all continue wearing masks and sanitizing their hand wherever they go.
Face Masks on Beaches

For the next phase of lockdown easing, it may be necessary to curb the number of visitors to tourist spots. Similar to limiting the number of people going to shopping malls, Dr Panpimol said.

She added that local governments should control the number of visitors to beaches in their respective provinces. Above all to prevent overcrowding and improper social distancing. Tourists and workers in the service industry should also be required to wear masks while on the beaches, Dr Panpimol said.

Hand sanitizer should also be provided for visitors while toilets and bathrooms on beach fronts should be cleaned every two hours, she said. She also believes visitors should have to check in and out at beaches.

Dr Panpimol said the health department has been monitoring every phase of relaxation. It found that while people continue to wash their hands, they aren’t wearing face masks in public as much.

She also said movie-goers will not prohibited from eating popcorn and soft drinks in cinemas. However they have been urged to take precautions and wear masks all the time.

Pubs and Bars Reopening

Meanwhile, Dr. Taweesilp Visanuyothin, spokesman for the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) said on Friday that more businesses and activities will be allowed to reopen ahead of schedule. If they can give assurances that they have plans to prevent covid-19 transmission.

Dr Taweesilp said that the CCSA has regularly discussed the fourth and final phase of relaxation. Especially for businesses and activities that are in the high-risk category such as pubs and bars.

The spokesman for Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, said that businesses that come up with plans to prevent transmissions may be permitted to reopen ahead of  schedule. However, such plans have to be approved by the CCSA’s business resumption committee first.

The next stage of relaxation which will effectively lead to a complete reopening of the country. The government plans to completely lift the lockdown on all businesses and activities on July 1 country wide.

This also includes lifting inter-provincial travel restrictions. And above all ending the emergency decree and curfew.

The emergency decree, which was invoked on March 26 to deal with Covid-19, will end in June. Furthermore the ban on international travel would end at the same time it is lifted.

The CCSA on Friday reported one new case of Covid-19 infection, a returnee from Kuwait who tested positive just before leaving quarantine. There have been no new deaths from covid-19.

Source: The Chiang Rai Times / Bangkok Post

Lockdown Collapsed #Thailand’s lucrative sex-industry

The black leather party masks that performers May and Som wear for their fetish shows in Bangkok are definitely not the sort to stop the corona-virus.

Behind closed doors, they practise for the day when health restrictions are lifted and tourists return, but they have no idea when and worry that the city’s infamous Patpong red-light district could be very different by then.

“This kind of place will be the last to reopen,” said May 31. Like Som, she goes only by her Thai nickname.

“Even when it does reopen, customers will be worried about their safety,” she said at the BarBar club on Patpong’s Soi 2 street. BarBar and other clubs such as “Bada Bing” and “Fresh Boys” are shuttered and the nights are largely silent.

Thailand shut bars and clubs in mid-March as corona-virus cases surged. It halted international passenger flights, stopping the tourism that had made Bangkok the world’s most visited city for four years.

Patpong went dark.

But residents say the decline had already begun for a red-light district that flourished in the 1970s as a rest stop for U.S. forces in Indochina.

“This COVID-19 is an accelerant of change,” said Michael Ernst, an Austrian 25-year veteran of the district and former bar owner who opened the Patpong Museum weeks before the new corona-virus reached Thailand.

“The go-go bar and its very one-dimensional concept of a stage and ladies dancing on it with a number. I think that’s already over, they just don’t know that yet.”

SHIFT

The number of go-go bars in Patpong district has waned in recent years as business has moved to other parts of Bangkok or online and as sex tourism has become a smaller part of the overall tourism industry for Thailand.

For decades, tourism figures were skewed towards men. But the growing importance of Chinese visitors in particular changed that. In 2018, more than 53 percent of tourists were women.

Nonetheless, Patpong’s nightlife district employed thousands of people, mostly young women. Most are now among the 2 million Thais the state planning agency believes may be made unemployed this year because of the impact of the virus.

BarBar is still paying some workers. But the manager of at least one go-go bar on Soi 2 just abandoned the lease.

Patpong had never known it as bad, said 70-year-old Pratoomporn Somritsuk, who for 35 years has run the Old Other Office drinking den.

“A lot of ladies here working in nightlife are mostly from a poor family or upcountry,” she said. “They have no chance to go work in a company.”

The lockdown has meant the whole sex industry has collapsed. Online escort service Smooci said activity in Bangkok fell to 10 percent in April.

Thailand has now begun to lift some movement restrictions with infections at over 3,000 and deaths nearly 60, but neither rising rapidly. There is talk of tourism resuming.

But a health ministry spokesman said that nightlife venues would be among the last to reopen.

“In the new normal, Patpong will have to adapt a lot. It may end up looking different, but this change will be for the better,” Rungruang Kitpati said.

Social distancing and the sex industry are hard to make compatible, however.

“I can provide alcohol gel or temperature checks,” said 38-year-old Jittra Nawamawat, one of BarBar’s founders. “But staying one metre apart is impossible.” – Reuters

Source - Bangkok Jack

#Thailand may take THREE YEARS to recover from COVID

The Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) has forecast that Thailand is likely to take up to three years to return to normal. 

Speaking at a seminar titled “New Normal for Business Sector” held by the Thai Chamber of Commerce (TCC), Somkiat Tangkitvanich, TDRI’s president, said this economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus outbreak is expected to be bigger than the 2008 global financial crisis.

He said TDRI expects it will take a year to 18 months to make and distribute a vaccine, and up to three years for the Thai economy to return to 2019 levels.

According to Somkiat, Thailand is in a transitional period, with lockdown measures starting to ease and many businesses allowed to reopen. However, he insisted tight control measures are still needed to curb a second wave of the outbreak.

The business sector needs to come up with new business practices to adapt to a changing business environment.

Despite massive fiscal stimulus packages and monetary easing, CIMB Thai Bank (CIMBT) predicted the Thai economy could continue falling sharply this quarter, with GDP contraction possibly below the 12.5 percent seen in the second quarter of 1998.

Thailand’s full-year GDP growth contracted by 7.6 percent 22 years ago when the economy reeled from the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

“We project a sharp fall of GDP in the second quarter by 14 percent from the previous year,” said Amonthep Chawla, head of research at CIMBT.

Amonthep said exports could continue to plunge from weak global demand and continual lockdowns in major economies. The number of tourist arrivals in the second quarter should drop sharply from travel restrictions.

The private sector will likely remain weak for both consumption and investment, following a decline in both farm and non-farm income and a lack confidence among consumers and investors, he said.

Thailand’s economy contracted by 1.8 percent year-on-year and 2.2 percent quarter-on-quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis for the first quarter, mainly attributed to the COVID-19 outbreak affecting the lucrative tourism industry, external demand and domestic private consumption.

The economy could shrink by about 10 percent year-on-year in the second half, but quarterly growth could recover, he said.

Source Pattaya One News