The tourists are the first ‘villa quarantine’ travel bubble tourists to enter the country. The model, if successful, is hoped to be used elsewhere to help reopen the country to tourism.
The tourists arrived from Indonesia on two flights operated by Indonesian national airline Garuda Indonesia on Sunday night (Feb 21).
In welcoming the tourists, Vice Governor Phichet said that 59 tourists had arrived.
However, according to a report by the Phuket office of the Public Relations Department (PR Phuket), V/Gov Phichet yesterday said that only 58 foreign tourists were observing the 14-day quarantine at the resort.
No explanation was given for the person no longer counted as a tourist.
Regardless, according to the PR Phuket report, Vice Governor Phichet yesterday said,
“At this stage, the villa quarantine has been well organised and it will be used as an example for other hotels across the country to accept foreign tourists
“Thank you to all the officers involved for their cooperation in making everything done very quickly, from the identification-checking process, whereby we had received the information before the tourists arrived on the island, all the way through to taking the tourists to the hotel.
“Every procedure [at the airport] was done quickly, including having swab test samples taken at the X-terminal building, which took about only 1.5 minutes each. All this was completed with no obstacles, which meant no instances of people being forced to gather in one area,” he added.
V/Gov Phichet also confirmed that the hotel staff must stay only in the resort area while the tourists are completing their 14-day quarantine.
“They cannot go outside of the location to ensure confidence for all people,” he said.
“Accommodation for them has been arranged so they don’t contaminate their homes,” he added.
“The 92 hotel staff who work in guest service areas also had their body temperature checked and were tested for infection first. They must also be tested again on March 5 and March 13 as part of the quarantine being provided in the resort,” V/Gov Phichet said.
Officers from the Phuket Provincial Health Office (PPHO) are also involved in taking care of the guests and hotel staff there to keep an eye on both tourists and hotel staff, he said.
“They can communicate with health officials via CCTV in case of urgent help, he added.
The PPHO officers will also provide daily reports on the activities undertaken at the resort by both staff and guests.
“Hotels and guests who are engaged in activities such as going to the gym, taking a walk or playing beach sports are also recorded so that the correct standards of conduct for these activities can be maintained. The measures used here will be used as the central standard and applied to other places in the future,” V/Gov Phichet said.
“I would like to inform you that today’s report, for the second day of quarantine, went quite smoothly. The screening results of all arrivals were negative, no infections were found,” he said.