Asean reported nearly 25,000 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday
The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 14.65 million across Southeast Asia, with 24,932 new cases reported on Wednesday (December 22). New deaths are at 441, bringing accumulated Covid-19 deaths in Asean to 301,268.
Malaysia and Singapore have agreed to suspend the sale of flight and bus tickets for the vaccinated travel lane (VTL) after a cluster of possible cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was detected in Singapore. The suspension will run from December 23 to January 20 next year and cover travel via the bridge connecting Malaysia to Singapore as well as an air corridor. The bridge link, or causeway, was one of the busiest crossing points in the world with a daily flow of hundreds of thousands of people in both directions before the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Indonesia is expected to see more people going homewards for year-end holidays than last year due to the loosened regulations on public activity restrictions and the high vaccination rate, despite threats by the Omicron Covid-19 variant. As of Tuesday, the Indonesian government still sticks to its plan to impose a more relaxed restriction policy from December 24 to January 2, 2022.
Fully-vaccinated people can travel as long as they can show negative antigen test results, but those who have only received their first doses are required to show negative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test results.
