India has reopened its borders to mass foreign tourism, ending a 20-month clampdown as COVID-19 infections across the country remain low and vaccination rates rise.
After halting tourist visas in March last year, India is now allowing quarantine-free entry to fully inoculated travelers from 99 reciprocating countries. The government only requires such visitors to monitor their health for 14 days after arrival.
From last month, tourists on chartered flights were already being granted entry and Indian authorities expanded that to arrivals on commercial flights yesterday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Many Indians have already been flocking to domestic tourist hot spots in the past few weeks, such as the western coastal state of Goa and the mountainous north, as a deadly second COVID-19 wave faded out after triggering peak infection rates of more than 400,000 cases a day in early May.
Families also gathered together this month to celebrate Diwali, the country’s largest festival, with new cases staying well below 15,000 a day.
India’s immunization campaign has also gathered pace, with more than 1 billion vaccine doses administered, while antibody surveys say that most Indians have already been exposed to COVID-19.
While national infection levels have in the past few weeks touched lows last seen earlier in the year, there are concerns that the easing of curbs risks a complacency similar to when India experienced an ebb between its two major waves.
Cambodia yesterday also reopened its borders to fully vaccinated travelers, two weeks earlier than originally planned, as it emerges from a lengthy lockdown bolstered by one of the world’s highest rates of immunization against COVID-19.
The program allows visitors to skip quarantine measures if they are fully vaccinated, test negative 72 hours before they enter the country and test negative upon their arrival.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen decided to move up the opening from Nov. 30 to start revitalizing the country’s economic and social activity as soon as possible, buoyed by the fact that 88 percent of Cambodians are now fully vaccinated.
“The situation has changed,” Hun Sen said in an audio message shared on social media.
The previous plan had been to phase in the reopening by initially restricting travelers to two seaside provinces, but the new scheme means fully vaccinated travelers are free to visit anywhere in the country after a negative test.
Unvaccinated travelers would still have to undergo a strict 14-day quarantine upon arrival and undergo a series of COVID-19 tests before they can travel further.
In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, Cambodia received 6.6 million foreigners who accounted for nearly US$5 billion in revenue. Most of them visited the famous Angkor Wat temples in Siem Reap Province and seaside destinations, Cambodian Tourism Ministry said.
Last year, the number of visitors dropped sharply to 1.3 million, and earnings from them plunged to about US$1 billion.
The Cambodian Ministry of Health yesterday reported 52 new COVID-19 cases and five deaths.
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