Thailand To Arrange COVID-19 Repatriation Flights To Taiwan

C: Ghana Shyam Khadka - Unsplash

In news from Thailand Saturday, Thai authorities have announced two flights to Taipei later this month aimed at repatriating foreign residents stuck in the country as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first flight is being scheduled for August 5th, the second for the 14th.

Speaking late Saturday in Bangkok, the acting president of Thai Airways International, Chansin Treenuchagron said the flights to Taiwan – code TG632 – would depart Suvarnabhumi Airport to the east of the Thai capital at 0825, arriving in Taipei at 1303 local the same day.

Just last week, Thailand reported a passenger from Taiwan as testing positive for coronavirus upon arrival in Thailand.

This was reported by the Taiwan Centers For Disease Control (CECC) as “a migrant worker who returned to Thailand from Taiwan has been confirmed to have coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). After contact with Thai authorities, the CECC has obtained information on the confirmed case. The case is a Thai migrant worker who worked in northern Taiwan. The migrant worker returned to Thailand on July 21 and tested positive for COVID-19 on July 25” although the CECC release was announced on July 27th.

Just 48 hours later the CECC also said “189 contacts at the company where the migrant worker had worked all have tested negative after undergoing PCR tests and antibody tests. The test results indicate that there is no risk of transmission at the company. The investigation into other possible sources of infection is under way.”

No further statements have been released at time of typing.

Two further repatriation flights from the Thai capital to Copenhagen in Denmark are also being scheduled for August 16th and 30th from the same airport.

All four flights will only permit passengers to board according to “strict social distancing regulations” reports say, and are being arranged through Thailand’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Bookings on all the flights are one-way out of the country, and cannot be made as part of any other round trip travel plan.

Mark Buckton

Mark is a journalism vet of 20 years with most of those years spent in Tokyo, Japan, as a columnist for The Japan Times and numerous other publications. His work has appeared on CNN, in the BBC, NPR, and in several dozen other media forms and publications across five continents.