Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the insurance requirements associated with traveling into Thailand. To be clear as of the time of this video this analysis does not yet apply. As noted in the title, we are not going to be seeing these changes come into effect until July 1.

A big question that was circling around prior to the announcements that Thailand Pass would be eased along with other travel restrictions coming into Thailand, a big question was “Well are they still going to have the insurance requirement?” I started thinking about making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: More Entry Barriers Lifted. Quoting directly: "The Thailand Pass registration and Covid-19 insurance requirements will be lifted for all people arriving in Thailand from July 1." I repeat: "The Thailand Pass registration and Covid-19 insurance requirements will be lifted for all people arriving in Thailand from July 1." That is not strictly speaking true, I will get to that in a moment. Quoting further: "The decisions were made at a meeting of the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) on Friday Spokesman Taweesilp Visanuyothin said." Quoting further: "Foreign nationals will not have to be insured for Covid-19 and thermal scanning will end at border checkpoints he said." So we already talked about thermal scanning. It looked like they were going to end that, they have done that. But I want to quote this again: "Foreign nationals will not have to be insured for Covid-19." So that is what we are looking at coming in. 

Now I want to be clear, this is different Insurance than Insurance we talked about in the context for example of the Long-Term Resident Visa as well as the O-A Retirement Visa, so that is a different type of insurance. We are talking specifically about the so-called COVID insurance which has basically been a requirement since the gradual unlocking of Thailand which began about this time 2 years ago, about this time in 2020. We went through major heavy lockdown in 2020. April was basically entirely locked down, May was essentially locked down and then in June we started kind of seeing things starting to open back up and we started assisting people who were trying to get back into Thailand. At first the only foreigners that were able to get in were Work Permit holders and then it kind of progressed from there. But this insurance requirement has been a key component associated with entry to Thailand, again since really the inception of the Emergency Decree so going back over two years ago, going back to the end of March 2020. So this is pretty big news and hopefully it will spur some more tourism. Thailand could certainly use that. We have discussed this in other videos. We really do need to get Thailand, the tourism sector I should say in Thailand back on her feet; it has been well and truly decimated. We have quoted the statistics on that in prior videos and this is certainly a good thing to see.

To be clear, we are talking about COVID Insurance specifically. For the folks who watch this channel who are coming from a retiree background or from a retiree perspective, bear in mind, this may not apply to you with respect to your insurance associated for example with the O-A Retirement Visa and I will make a video contemporaneously with this one wherein we discuss sort of more the ramifications associated with Retirement Visa insurance moving forward here in 2022. For now, general travelers, just tourists looking to come into Thailand, good news for you folks. We are not looking at a situation where you are going to need to provide insurance just to come into Thailand just for example for like 30 days.