The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Bloomberg
Thailand is rushing to vaccinate its elderly citizens and other vulnerable groups ahead of the local New Year celebrations as the festivities are seen fuelling a surge in Covid cases and deaths, potentially derailing a tentative economic and tourism recovery.
Millions of Thais will travel to their hometowns from cities such as Bangkok to join families in celebrating Songkran, the first time they can do so without any travel curbs since the outbreak of the pandemic.
That’s prompted the Health Ministry to warn new daily cases could jump to as high as 100,000 a day from almost 20,000 recently.
A booster-dose campaign for the elderly saw an estimated 500,000 people get inoculated in the past three weeks, taking the total number of those above 60 with three shots to 3 million. But there’s a long way to close the gap as the Southeast Asian nation has an estimated 11 million senior citizens, Health Ministry data show.