The Rural Doctor Society (RDS) has put its weight behind a proposal made by a senior doctor at Ramathibodi Hospital that urged the government to spend around 1 billion baht to subsidise senior citizens' trips to a Covid vaccination centre.
The group supported the idea floated by Vijj Kasemsup, a doctor with the Department of Community Medicine at Ramathibodi Hospital's Faculty of Medicine.
Dr Vijj suggested the government should cover the cost of a senior citizen's trip to a vaccination centre in a bid to get more elderly people in Thailand vaccinated.
"If the government pays 500 baht per trip to get a jab, it would cost the government a thousand baht to get a person fully vaccinated.
"This means they will have to pay one billion baht to cover half of the number of unvaccinated senior citizens but it is much better value than to pay for medical treatments in ICUs," said Dr Vijj.
According to the RDS, over 90% of Covid deaths in the first quarter of this year were senior citizens with underlying health conditions.
The group urged the government to act quickly to get more people vaccinated, as the number of Covid deaths has risen to over 100 per day in recent days.
The number of people who require supplementary oxygen is also on the rise, and the RDS said both numbers will continue rising for another month, in light of the upcoming Songkran holiday.
The last figures from the Ministry of Public Health showed there are 2 million unvaccinated senior citizens in Thailand.
As such, the RDS said, the government needs to change its strategy to ensure more people are protected against the virus.
The Department of Disease Control (DDC) had previously proposed a similar scheme to the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) but was rejected, supposedly because of the cost.