Welcome to Thailand: Pandemic Impacts Tourists, Migrant Workers in Starkly Different Ways

The coronavirus pandemic and related movement restrictions are impacting foreign tourists in Thailand and migrant-workers in very different ways. In response to the latest surge in infections, the Thai government in recent weeks announced new policies, including ones that affect foreigners who visit or work in the country as both are vital to the nation’s economy.

In late June, authorities said they were shutting down camps for construction workers in and around Bangkok. This forced tens of thousands of mostly foreign migrant-workers to isolate indoors for at least a month.

And in a bid to jumpstart an economy ravaged by the pandemic, particularly the lucrative tourism sector, the government announced it was re-opening Phuket Island exclusively to fully vaccinated tourists as a “sandbox” destination. Since then, the government has announced the opening of Koh Samui, another island popular with tourists, as a second sandbox.

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