Go to Asia this summer? Mission (almost) impossible

Envy Asia? We will have to wait. From the Indus to the Pacific, the Zero Covid strategy has erected large health walls at all borders. Mandatory and supervised quarantines, suspension of tourist visas or visa exemptions, even almost total entry bans …

And the recent wave of Covid-19 in India has caused yet another turn of the screw in the region, as vaccination plans fall behind. A bad wind that capsizes the well-oiled plans of the flagship tourist destinations to reopen this summer.

Faced with a rebound, Thailand had to put on hold its quarantine plan reduced to one week for those vaccinated. And local quarantine exemption plans remain uncertain. Thailand wanted to test on the island of Phuket from the 1^is July, as well as Indonesia on the island of Bali. One month after the deadline, in both cases, the reopening remains suspended for late government announcements.

Phuket without its tourists

It will be necessary that the two islands succeed in massively vaccinating their local populations to achieve the famous “collective immunity”. In Phuket, only tourists who are themselves vaccinated will be allowed, will have to take a PCR test before departure and expect heavy paperwork to obtain their “entry certificate”. Until the last minute, these holiday plans could be swept away by yet another regional epidemic wave. And the unfortunate holidaymaker who turns out to be positive or contact case during his stay should expect to taste the joys of Zero Covid: hospitalization and isolation of the patient until at least two negative tests, fourteen in quarantine for contact cases.

So there remains only one “safe” destination for those allergic to the health dictatorship: Pakistan, fully open, without quarantine … but agitated for months by violent anti-French demonstrations.