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HKSAR considers impact of Singapore's COVID-19 strategy on air travel bubble
July 6th 2021
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) chief executive, Carrie Lam, said Singapore's new COVID-19 strategy represented a "new factor" in the proposed air travel bubble (ATB) that was first mooted in late 2020 and is yet to get off the ground. Read More » "Singapore is moving to a new strategy so we need to understand more about that new strategy and if it will have any impact on the arrangements we have devised," Lam told reporters in Hong Kong today. Singapore is in the process of loosening pandemic restrictions. It aims to have two-thirds of its six million population vaccinated by August. The government has outlined plans to have its highly vaccinated population live with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it in the country. Lam said the vaccination rates would be a factor for a revived ATB. "When the scheme was first announced, it was a unilateral requirement on the part of Hong Kong people travelling to Singapore that they needed to be vaccinated. Now Singapore has a very high vaccination rate, another factor we need to consider on top of what we have agreed previously is if both sides should require vaccination as a condition for participating in the air travel bubble," Lam said.
