The CDC warned US citizens against traveling to Thailand on Monday, citing a spike in COVID-19 cases there. The announcement caps a dramatic reversal from the earliest days of the pandemic, when the country was praised for containing the spread of the virus while outbreaks raged in Europe and the Americas.
The speed with which Thailand’s epidemiological outlook deteriorated is stark. On April 1, just 26 new cases were being reported, with an early 2021 wave of infections that peaked at around 1,000 cases per day seemingly extinguished. Fast-forward to August 10 and the Thai Public Health Ministry was reporting 19,843 cases and 235 new deaths over a 24-hour period.
The surge can be traced back to two developments. One is the rise of more contagious variants such as Delta and Alpha, which are supercharging outbreaks throughout Southeast Asia. Another is a chain of serious missteps in Thailand’s vaccine rollout.
Analysis
A bet on Chinese vaccines that did not pay off
Thailand’s national inoculation drive centers on three vaccines: Sinovac, Sinopharm, and AstraZeneca.
The pace of vaccination has been slow, and Bangkok has only procured enough doses to fully vaccinate around 14% of the population to date. This shortfall is being compounded by the questionable efficacy of Chinese vaccines against COVID variants, notably Delta. In July, Thailand joined Southeast Asian peers Malaysia and Indonesia in mixing vaccine doses in the hope of boosting the efficacy of Chinese vaccines.
Vaccine procurement has been heavily politicized from the start; that is, for the countries that actually had a choice on where to source their supply. In the earlier phases of the pandemic, Beijing offered up domestically produced vaccines to developing countries that were being priced out of the white-hot market for Western vaccines, portraying the move as an act of diplomatic benevolence. Now it’s Washington’s turn. Millions of US-produced vaccines have recently been donated to countries like Indonesia and Thailand to inoculate frontline workers, many of whom had already received two doses of China-produced vaccine.
