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Singapore’s plans for reopening could complicate long-awaited travel bubble with Hong Kong
- Singapore has laid out new vision for return to normal as vaccination rate there climbs
- Now Hong Kong, where vaccinations lag, must look into whether that plan ‘will have any impact on arrangements’ for travel bubble, Lam says
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Hong Kong will look into how a change in Singapore’s strategy for tackling the coronavirus may affect the quarantine-free travel bubble between the two destinations, and whether a vaccination requirement should be extended to visitors from the city state as a result, the chief executive has said.
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City leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Tuesday said Singapore was still the government’s top candidate for a bilateral travel corridor, which she pledged to finally launch – after two previous failed attempts – given that the coronavirus situation there had stabilised.
Singapore last month however laid out a new vision for a return to normal, with plans to allow quarantine-free travel and large gatherings, and even to potentially halt massive contact-tracing operations and daily case counts, as the vaccination rate there climbs. As of Sunday, 38 per cent of the city state’s population had been fully vaccinated, a figure it aimed to boost to two-thirds by early August.
“We need to understand more about that new strategy and whether it will have any impact on the arrangements that we have devised,” Lam said.
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Hong Kong, by comparison, is likely to maintain its current set of social-distancing measures for at least two more weeks, according to a source.
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