Tourism slump in Thailand, Korea’s “second wave”

The first quarter GDP figures for Thailand (due on Monday) will make for grim reading. While all economies have been hit hard by coronavirus containment measures, the collapse in global tourism means Thailand’s economy has been hit harder than most. Meanwhile, although the jump in new cases of coronavirus over the past week in Korea offers a cautionary tale for other countries in the region as they look to re-open their economies, some perspective is needed. The risk of re-opening an economy when just a handful of new cases are being reported every day is clearly much lower than that in parts of Western Europe and the US, which are reopening while thousands of new cases are still being reported daily.