Official: Phuket Sandbox numbers too low

Lacklustre response: Passengers disembarking from a speedboat at Rassada Pier in Phuket under the Phuket Sandbox programme. — Bloomberg

Visitors to Thailand’s resort island of Phuket in July were at just one per cent of pre-pandemic levels, said an official, as a bid to revive tourism to the South-East Asian country gets off to a slow start amid its biggest Covid-19 outbreak yet.

The island reopened last month under the Phuket Sandbox programme to fully vaccinated tourists who could skip Thailand’s mandatory two-week quarantine provided they remained on Phuket, where tourism accounts for 90% of the local economy.