The much-hyped travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand is due to kick off within weeks, opening up overseas travel for the first time since our international borders were slammed shut last March.

With New Zealand now locked in, your thoughts may be turning to what other countries we could be allowed to travel to next.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked this very question yesterday during his press conference about the New Zealand travel bubble.

The New Zealand travel bubble will begin from 11.59pm on April 18 Wellington time (9.59pm AEST). (Supplied)

Although he mentioned several Asian countries, he was careful not to raise expectations of anything happening soon.

“We have looked at places like Singapore and Japan and South Korea and countries like this, but at this stage we are not in a position to move forward on any of those,” Mr Morrison said.

However, multiple government sources told the Sydney Morning Herald that immigration and health authorities were exploring plans to open up a travel bubble with Singapore within months.

This could be followed by other countries with low COVID-19 numbers such as Fiji, Vietnam and Thailand, as well as Japan and South Korea.
Singapore could be one of the next countries to open a travel bubble with Australia. (AP)

Singapore has been averaging about 25 COVID-19 cases a day for the past week, numbers it hasn’t typically surpassed since September.

Fiji has only recorded 67 cases of COVID-19 during the entire pandemic, with long stretches of no daily infections.

Vietnam is currently averaging less than a handful of COVID-19 cases per day, while Thailand’s daily average is slightly higher at 78.

The number of coronavirus cases in Japan and South Korea are both significantly higher again, with the former averaging around 500 cases a day and the latter 2400.

Whether those numbers will be prohibitively high remains to be seen.

Singapore Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung was questioned in Singapore Parliament on Monday about which nations the country was considering establishing a travel bubble with.

He mentioned Australia among the list of candidates, however said the potential bubble would be reliant on vaccination certificates.

“We are exploring with several countries and regions, including Australia, on the mutual recognition of vaccination certificates. The certificates can be physical or digital, and we will need them to be secure, tamper-proof and verifiable,” he said.

“However, vaccinations are only one aspect of pandemic control.

“Social distancing, contact tracing, quarantine and testing are also very important aspects which countries and regions have used to control the spread of [the] COVID-19 virus even as vaccines become available.”

Mr Morrison said the bubble “is the first of many more steps to come”.

“This is an important first step,” he said.

“But as more of the world, and particularly more of our own country, is vaccinated, then obviously we can start moving to managing this virus a lot more like other viruses that we deal with in a more standard way.

“That’s our objective, but we’ll let the evidence lead us on that.

“And at this point, the evidence is not strong enough to give us a good pointer about when we will arrive at that point.”



This content first appear on 9news

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