Bangkok: The utopia of tourists, Thai tourist city of Pattaya placed under COVID-19 lockdown
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Thailand’s tourist city of Pattaya and its surrounding district were placed under lockdown on Wednesday as the country continues to grapple with an intensifying outbreak of the coronavirus.
Thailand has confirmed a total of 6,690 cases, including 61 deaths.
Earlier this week, officials in Bangkok announced new restrictions, including the closure of some entertainment facilities, during the New Year’s holiday.
After months of seeming to have the COVID-19 situation under control, Thailand has seen two major clusters develop since mid-December. One has mainly infected hundreds of migrant workers from Myanmar at a seafood market near Bangkok, while in recent days another cluster has grown connected to a gambling den in an eastern province.
Bangkok has been designated a zone 2 area, meaning that more than 10 new cases have been confirmed there, and the number is likely to increase.
Readers Times analysis found that Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha visited the city on Wednesday to give his support to the health workers at quarantine centers. He expressed concern for the effect that the new restrictions will have on Pattaya’s economy, which relies heavily on tourism, but it was necessary to concentrate on controlling the spread of the virus.
