“People will still get infected but they are fine. And so you make COVID-19 more like influenza. You can’t make COVID-19 like measles, for example, where you try to eradicate [it].”

The health minister’s comments come as Thailand began welcoming foreign tourists to Phuket without quarantine on Thursday only hours before a new nationwide daily record of 61 deaths to the virus was announced on Friday.

Thailand’s vaccination has been dreadfully slow and fraught with mis-steps - less than 10 per cent of its 70 million people have had at least one shot - but it prioritised jabs on the holiday island in an effort to re-energise the tourism sector, which before the pandemic made up one fifth of the country’s economy.

While health authorities struggle to contain the virus in the capital Bangkok, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha and his full cabinet were in Phuket to personally welcome the first international tourists to arrive under the so-called “sandbox” model.

There were 347 foreign tourists who flew in on the first day of the re-opening on flights from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Singapore.

They must remain on Phuket for 14 days before they can travel elsewhere in Thailand, which Prayuth wants to open entirely without quarantine by October in a bid to restore the livelihoods of people devastated by the pandemic.

“We know there are risks involved,” he said. “Some countries are seeing a new surge in new cases and fatalities and people from those countries are expected to visit Thailand.

“But we have to accept the risk.”

Loading

It is one that for now won’t be taken by Indonesia in Bali as the region’s largest country faces record numbers of daily cases and COVID-related deaths that have left its health system in danger of collapse.

“There’s no way we can re-open [Bali] with this Delta variant, so we’re not even thinking about that now,” said Indonesia Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the right-hand man of President Joko Widodo.

“Right now we’re thinking about how to scale down [the infections].”

The Netherlands is the latest country to donate vaccines to Indonesia, saying it would send 3 million doses to Jakarta, and the UK has promised to provide doses, joining the United States and Japan in coming to its aid.

Australia has donated $77 million to Indonesia to buy vaccines through the COVAX scheme.