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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawThailand Immigration LawMore Talk of "Vaccine Passports" for Travel to Thailand

More Talk of "Vaccine Passports" for Travel to Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing so-called "vaccine passports" for Thailand. When we are talking about vaccine passports, it is really kind of a euphemism and I have been using it a lot also interchangeably with "immunity passports". It is a term that has come up in the last year. It is sort of a colloquialism for basically documentation proving that one is vaccinated in order to enter a given country. People often forget and in the last 20 odd years, a lot of documentation regarding vaccination has not been required for a lot of different types of travel. If you go back a decade, even before 20 years ago, there was a lot of documentation oftentimes that was required when entering different countries with respect to being able to prove health certification.

Now whether or not COVID warrants that level of documentation is in my opinion somewhat debatable, but long story short, it is not an unprecedented or unheard of thing having to show documentation with respect to inoculation when traveling across international borders. At one time it was actually fairly frequent. That stated, for the last 20 years or so it really especially out here in Southeast Asia, Thailand specifically, it wasn't really a major concern.

Bearing that in mind we are going quote and analyze the situation. In a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: TAT Wants Vaccine Passport Policy. Quoting directly: "Thailand should have a clear-cut path on a vaccine passport by June if plans to reopen the international market by the fourth quarter are kept, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand, TAT." Quoting further: "Siripakorn Cheawsamoot TAT Deputy Governor said the Government policy would have a tremendous effect towards international market plans particularly on the long haul market which is progressing rapidly in terms of mass vaccination programs." It should be noted he is the TAT Governor with portfolio over Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. Quoting further: "The opinions of overseas agents in recent surveys in key markets show tourists are ready to be inoculated or participate with any "vaccine passport" policy."  Now I would love to see the statistics on that and the polling and see who they are talking to how, many people they are talking to. One thing that has been a little bit upsetting for me when researching a lot of these issues has been seeing where they are quoting surveys and then you will come to find out the survey surveyed like 50 people. I am not saying that that is what has happened here; I didn't dig much further than just the main, superficial part of this article. 

Long story short, there is a lot of talk about the notions of documentation pertaining to vaccinations. Exactly how this is going to play out remains to be seen but as I stated earlier, inoculation documentation in the context of crossing of international borders is not unheard of. It certainly is not unprecedented so I don't think it is too far outside the realm of possibility to presume that it could happen especially with respect to travel into Thailand.