The government has been vocal about downgrading Covid-19 and the right for people to receive emergency treatment anywhere but completely silent on the emergency decree that has been in use for almost two years.
Should the sequence of actions be reversed?
Instead of taking away public health services even when the threat apparently remains, the government should rethink and work on revoking restrictions first.
From a disease control perspective, the emergency decree seems the least necessary.
If the government really believes the Covid-19 situation is gradually easing in terms of severity, it should consider lifting the emergency decree first.
Other measures, whether its plan to remove Covid-19 treatment from conditions covered by the Universal Coverage for Emergency Patients (UCEP) next month or its goal to downgrade the pandemic to a much less severe status of "endemic", can then be carefully mapped out under the new "normal" legal framework.
The government first declared an emergency situation in March 2020, when infections jumped to about 1,000 per day.
The decree has since been extended more than a dozen times, with the latest renewal stipulating that the law shall remain in place until the cabinet determines otherwise.
So far, the emergency decree has been mainly used to enforce its designation of disease control zones and regulation of activities therein.
At the height of the pandemic, the law was used to roll out curfews and to temporarily close public places or private premises deemed at risk of becoming hotbeds for the disease such as gyms or shopping malls.
However, as the government winds down restrictions in the wake of a jump in cases, but not fatalities, caused by the relatively mild Omicron variant, these draconian powers are no longer strictly necessary, as the government still has the Communicable Disease Act to rely on.
The Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) earlier insisted that the emergency decree was necessary for the implementation of quarantine to screen travellers coming into the country.
With the compulsory quarantine being replaced by the more lenient Test & Go scheme, justifications for the extraordinary law's continued existence are dwindling further.
The law is ostensibly designed to maintain law and order in the face of a security crisis and adapting it to curb public health threats has therefore proven awkward.
For example, the punishment for people who violated the law is quite harsh, two years in prison or a fine of 40,000 baht.
It is not even clear whether such steep punitive threats have been effective in curbing risky activities or controlling the disease in general.
Many have linked the invocation of the decree with the eruption of anti-government protests at around the same time, believing that Covid-19 was a convenient excuse to crack down on political oversight and lessen the legal scrutiny of its actions.
If the government really does intend to rein in its pandemic powers and let people return to a new normal life, whatever that may mean, it should be clear about what it will do regarding the emergency decree.
If there is no evidence that the law continues to fulfil a useful function in controlling Covid-19, it should be the first restriction to be lifted.
