Singapore and Hong Kong to begin ‘journey bubble’ flights on Nov. 22

SINGAPORE — Quarantine-free leisure journey between Hong Kong and Singapore will resume on Nov. 22, in keeping with particulars of a bilateral air journey bubble introduced Wednesday.

Beneath the brand new tips, passengers shall be allowed to journey between the 2 places with out the necessity to isolate on arrival. As a substitute, they are going to be required to bear a Covid-19 check and supply a destructive outcome inside 72 hours earlier than departure. All vacationers arriving in Hong Kong will even be required to take a Covid-19 check on the airport upon arrival.

There shall be no restrictions on the aim of journey and no requirement for a managed itinerary or sponsorship. Nonetheless, vacationers will need to have no journey historical past to anyplace exterior of Hong Kong or Singapore inside 14 days previous to departure.

Arrivals shall be topic to native Covid-19 restrictions within the respective markets, comparable to downloading a contact tracing app and carrying masks. Any vacationers who contract the virus shall be required to bear their very own medical prices.

Flights shall be initially restricted to at least one per day into every metropolis with a restrict of 200 vacationers on every flight.

If the coronavirus state of affairs doesn’t deteriorate in both metropolis, flights are anticipated to extend from Dec. 7 to 2 per day into every metropolis. Nonetheless, ought to the weekly common of confirmed instances exceed 5 per day on both facet, the bubble shall be suspended for 2 weeks, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Financial Growth and Commerce, Edward Yau, famous.

The designated air journey bubble flights will solely ferry passengers touring between Hong Kong and Singapore, and won’t embrace these transiting by means of both of the cities, the announcement famous.

Hong Kong and Singapore first introduced plans for a bilateral journey bubble in mid-October as each cities search to restore among the injury inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic on their hard-hit tourism and aviation industries.

With out home air journey markets, the 2 Asian enterprise hubs are closely reliant on worldwide journey. Final yr, Hong Kong recorded greater than 453,000 customer arrivals from Singapore, whereas Singapore acquired 489,000 guests from Hong Kong, in keeping with the respective cities’ official statistics.

The settlement will fall properly in need of bringing flights between the 2 places to their pre-pandemic common of 18 per day. Nonetheless, Singapore’s minister for transport, Ong Ye Kung, hailed the settlement as a “first of its sort,” and stated it might go a way in reinstating worldwide journey.

“The Singapore-Hong Kong Air Journey Bubble allows us to attain two aims on the similar time – open up our borders in a managed method, whereas sustaining security in our societies,” he stated.

“Whereas we could also be beginning small, this is a vital step ahead. I’ve little doubt each Singapore and Hong Kong will co-operate totally to make this scheme work. It will likely be a helpful reference for different international locations and areas which have managed the epidemic, and are considering opening their borders,” he added.

Each Singapore and Hong Kong have been early advocates of introducing journey agreements with different international locations thought-about to be low danger.

Singapore, for its half, has unilaterally opened its borders to vacationers from choose international locations together with Australia, Brunei, mainland China, Vietnam and New Zealand. In the meantime, Hong Kong is claimed to be in talks with 10 international locations, together with Japan and Thailand, over related preparations.

As of Nov. 10, Singapore had 58,073 whole confirmed coronavirus instances and 28 deaths. Hong Kong had a complete of 5,390 confirmed instances and 108 deaths.

— CNBC’s Yen Nee Lee contributed to this report.