In a bid to boost Covid-19 vaccination rates in areas under their jurisdiction, the governors of Yala and Phayao provinces have banned unvaccinated people from services offered by state offices and local banks, resulting in many asking if such discriminatory measures go overboard.
In Phayao, local banks have been urged to leave customers who have not been jabbed in the cold. Only customers who have received at least one jab will be served. Meanwhile, the Phayao Provincial Health Office has threatened to tighten measures by banning unvaccinated people from restaurants when the country fully reopens on Nov 1.
In Yala, governor Pirom Niltaya has issued similar orders that also include all state agencies which have been told to only serve people who can prove they have had at least one vaccine shot.
On Oct 18, Yala authorities also set up about a dozen checkpoints with the mission of blocking unvaccinated people from travelling into the province.
Yala is among the 10 top provinces with high infection rates and a rigorous vaccination campaign has been seen as needed to improve the situation. As of yesterday, Yala ranked third, after Bangkok and Songkhla among provinces with the highest number of new infection cases.
But the southern province has a slow vaccination rate. On Oct 13, it was reported that 273,238 people or 60.4% of the total 451,757 population have had their first jab, while only 170,571 have had their second shot, while 6,094 have had a third.
While vaccination is lauded as the best protection against the disease, the latest news of a resurgence of cases or even a new variant in Europe and the US or even Israel (where the majority of citizens are fully inoculated) raises questions that vaccination might not be a sure-fire method to hedge against the pandemic and its mutations.
As is now widely known, the new coronavirus which hit the world hard when it broke out in late 2019 is unpreventable, meaning even people who get complete vaccine doses can be re-infected.
It's now come to the point where the best vaccines can do is to reduce disease severity, and lower death rates.
This also depends on the type of vaccine used, as efficacy differs from brand to brand. Sinovac, known for lower efficacy, performs relatively worse in dealing with the Delta variant, which is the predominant strain in most regions in Thailand.
It's true that some Thais, especially those in the South, have ignored calls for vaccination but it is unfair to brand them as so-called anti-vaxxers.
They just prefer vaccines with better, those with high preventability rates especially when dealing with new variants and they would rather wait. But in doing so they're putting their health at risk.
It's necessary that provincial authorities improve vaccination campaigns to help convince more people of the importance of prevention.
But barring unvaccinated people from state and banking services is a form of discrimination that denies them their basic rights. More importantly, such drastic measures affect those who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons.
The authorities must keep up their guard against the virus, especially as the country is about to reopen, and measures -- such as wearing masks and social distancing -- must remain in place. But unnecessary discrimination against the unvaccinated should be avoided.
