From the time the novel coronavirus spread, each country has to tackle this pandemic by employing different policies from soft, e.g., wearing a mask, to even draconian, i.e., city lockdown. When the national government of each state, including Thailand, issued different COVID-19 policies, we can better understand those policies by studying and analyzing them systematically. This article, therefore, aims to examine how the public policy system of Thailand responds to the COVID-19 pandemic and how efficient it is.
This paper found that Thailand’s COVID-19 policies, which are mainly planned, decided, and implemented by the Thai government, cover many aspects such as immigration control, protective medical supplies procurement, communication, foreign affairs, epidemic prevention, remedy, and recovery. In terms of public policy subsystems, each subsystem of the Thai COVID-19 policies responds to the outbreak quite well and comprehensively because of the establishment of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Epidemic Administrative Center (CDC). Furthermore, other agencies such as the Bank of Thailand, Ministry of Public Health, and Ministry of Education also implement the COVID-19 policies related to their responsibilities as well as they can. In terms of the environment of public policy, there are several factors influencing the successful implementation of the Thai COVID-19 policies, for example, the Prime Minister (political environment), the quality of the Thai population and technology popularization in Thailand (socio-cultural environment), and universal COVID-19 prevention measures (international environment). In terms of tools for public policy, there are a lot of tools fully employed in implementing the Thai COVID-19 policies like voluntary tools such as families, communities, and voluntary organizations, as well as mandatory tools like regulations, public institutions, and mixing tools like the daily report of COVID-19 situation (information), “D-M-H-T-T” re-emphasis (dissuasion), vaccine research grants, and tax incentives (subsidy).
Nevertheless, there are certain recommendations to better advance Thai COVID-19 policies such as integrating some parts of the society and using participatory practices to gain citizens’ perspectives to create appropriate COVID-19 policies, as well as inventing implementation standards and measures for getting feedback and preventing policy deviations in economic and educational aspects.