Covid-19 vaccines are finally here – so when can I travel again? The face of luxury tourism in 2021 and beyond
- China’s Sinovac, BioNTech/Pfizer from Germany and the US, and the UK’s Oxford/AstraZeneca will all be available in Hong Kong
- Will immunity passports like CommonPass be necessary to travel, and when will they be introduced?
So, vaccines. That’s a relief, eh? With several Covid-19 vaccines appearing to be safe and effective, one of the questions on many people’s lips is: when can we go on holiday again?
But it’s going to be a tremendous challenge to make enough of those vaccines, get them to people and get those people to take them, so a return to anything like normal for luxury travel is likely to take a little while yet. And so the answer to the question of when we can travel appears to be: not any time soon, but probably at some point this year – although, as with everything else where this disease is concerned, that could easily change.
I think it’s good news for us that the vaccine is ready, but … it will take time for the public to trust the effectiveness of the vaccines … it won’t go back to pre-Covid levels in one night
In Hong Kong, vaccines will be available free of charge from the government probably exclusively, but will not be mandatory. The government hopes to start vaccinating people in January and has secured supplies of three vaccines from three different sources which are due to arrive at different times during 2021: Sinovac from China, BioNTech/Pfizer from Germany and the US, and Oxford/AstraZeneca from the UK.
Some but not many other jurisdictions around the world have already started vaccination programmes. Israel, with a population slightly larger than Hong Kong’s, seems to have been the fastest in rolling it out so far. It’s currently vaccinating about 2 per cent of its population per day with other small, wealthy states in the Middle East not far behind.
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There is no news, though, on when people will be able to travel freely and without quarantine. Hong Kong is still banning non-residents and mandating 21 days’ quarantine for all incoming residents, while most other places have similarly stringent restrictions. The vaccine will need to have been rolled out to a very large number of people and its effects closely monitored – in particular the effect it has on the virus’s ability to infect other people – before any jurisdiction is going to even think about lowering its guard in terms of travel restrictions.
Jason Wong, chairman of travel trade body the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, says sentiment in the industry is optimistic but cautious.
