Singapore and Malaysia should work to fully resume air, land travel: Ong

While ties between Singapore and Malaysia have been disrupted by the pandemic, the situation has improved, and it is time for both countries to work towards full resumption of air and land travel for vaccinated people, said Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung in a Facebook post yesterday.

He is currently visiting Malaysia, where he met the country's Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

Mr Ong said: "We had a fruitful and frank discussion.

"We agreed that Singapore and Malaysia enjoy excellent and longstanding bilateral relations, our peoples have many linkages and ties, but they were all disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic."

He added: "We also agreed that the Covid-19 situation has stabilised and is improving in both countries, and we should now work towards the full resumption of air and land travel for vaccinated persons." He said this would rebuild the disrupted people-to-people connections.

At their meeting, Mr Ong presented Mr Khairy with the book In This Together: Singapore's Covid-19 Story, which was written by journalists from The Straits Times, chronicling the first two years of the Republic's fight against the pandemic.

Mr Ong is on a working visit to Kuala Lumpur from yesterday to tomorrow. Today, he will deliver a keynote address at the National Institutes of Health.