Singapore-Hong Kong travel bubble: city state still hoping for quarantine-free travel, health minister says
- At a health conference in Hong Kong on Wednesday, Ong Ye Kung said Singapore still hoped that the twice-foiled travel bubble could launch ‘at some point’
- The city state’s experience of switching away from a zero-Covid policy had helped it find more ‘partners for us to open up to’, he said
At the Asia Summit on Global Health on Wednesday, Ong sat on stage alongside Hong Kong’s Secretary for Food and Health Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee for a session on building resilient, equitable and effective long-term public health policy. Three other panellists joined in virtually.
Ong said that with Singapore’s current infection rates “we find that around the world there are many countries and places where [the] infection level is about the same, so they become possible partners for us to open up to.”
The city state is averaging around 1,600 to 2,000 new coronavirus cases each day, although most do not have any or only mild symptoms as 94 per cent of the eligible population is vaccinated.
“We hope that at some point, as we bring our infection down further, our bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore can be realised again,” Ong said.
Ong is the first foreign government minister to visit Hong Kong, where 70 per cent of the eligible population is vaccinated, since the start of the pandemic.
