Closed departure hall at Hong Kong International Airport Terminal.
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SINGAPORE – Singapore and Hong Kong have again delayed the start of their bilateral “travel bubble” – officials from both cities said on Tuesday, postponing the plan to 2020.
The latest postponement follows a previous decision to push back the air travel bubble by two weeks, following reports of a resurgence in new Covid-19 cases by Hong Kong. The inaugural flights under the arrangement – which initially allowed passengers to leave the quarantine – were to begin on 22 November.
“Singapore and Hong Kong have further reviewed the COVID-19 situation in Hong Kong, and with local unlinked cases still high, both sides have decided to postpone the launch of the Singapore-Hong Kong Air Travel Bubble (ATB) until December 2020,” the Civil Aviation Authority said. Singapore (CAAS) said in a statement.
Both the Singapore Aviation Authority and the Hong Kong government said they would review the reorganization at the end of December to decide on a new start date.
With the first postponement of the travel bubble, new Covid-19 infections are on the rise in Hong Kong. Official figures show that an additional 76 cases were reported in the city on Monday, with the number of infections rising since the outbreak, 31. Were taken into.
Meanwhile, Singapore appears to have kept its domestic epidemic under control, reporting mostly imported cases in the past few weeks. The cumulative case in the city on Monday reached 58,218, according to figures from its health ministry.
The ubble of the Singapore-Hong Kong travel bubble was first announced in October as two major Asian business hubs sought to repair some of the economic losses affecting their tourism and aviation industries due to the coronavirus epidemic.
Both cities do not have local air travel markets and their tourism and aviation industries rely heavily on international travel. Last year, Hong Kong received more than 3,453,000 visitors from Singapore, while 489,000,000 visitors came from Singapore to Hong Kong, according to official figures from both parties.
The bilateral travel bubble will not bring back many visitors, but Singapore’s Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung hailed the arrangement as “the first of its kind” that could somehow move forward in re-establishing international travel.
– CNBC’s Karen Gilchrist contributed to this report.
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