Hong Kong and Singapore set to reveal travel bubble: SCMP

[SINGAPORE] Singapore and Hong Kong will reveal they've reached a preliminary agreement on a travel bubble that may exempt residents of both cities from quarantining or stay-at-home notices, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported Thursday, citing people it didn't identify.

No firm date on the arrangement has been fixed, but the agreement could start as soon as November, although December would be a more realistic time frame, according to the report. Ministers in both cities are due to hold separate press conferences later on Thursday afternoon.

Hong Kong-listed Cathay Pacific Airways jumped as much as 6.1 per cent, the most in more than six weeks while shares of Singapore Airlines rose 0.3 per cent. Both airlines have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic because they don't have a domestic market to fall back on.

Singapore Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung said in Parliament last week that there's a desire internationally to cautiously open the skies up again, noting that Hong Kong intends to negotiate travel bubble arrangements with countries including the city-state. Mr Ong will hold a media briefing at 2.30pm local time.

Earlier this week Singapore lowered the quarantine threshold for travellers coming from Hong Kong to seven days from 14 and added Hong Kong to its list of countries considered "well under control and the risk of importation is low", the SCMP said.

The city-state recorded no new local cases of Covid-19 for the first time since February earlier this week, as it rebounds from an outbreak in migrant worker dormitories that at one stage contributed to more than a thousand infections a day.

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Daily case figures in Hong Kong for October have mostly been in the single digits, with 18 the highest recorded so far this month. Commerce Secretary Edward Yau Tang-wah will also meet with the media at 2.30pm, the SCMP said.

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